Have You Ever Gotten False or Odd Notifications from Google Webmaster Tools?
-
I just got an email for one of my client websites from Google Webmaster Tools letting me know that the Google Bot could not access the website? The notification indicated that there may be a robots.txt issue that prevented crawling, but that they would try something to crawl it again.
In this situation, we had just created a new Webmaster Tools account for the client, and there were (are) two GWT accounts now for the website, one that is incorrectly set to http://clientwebsite.com and the other that is set to www.clientwebsite.com. One of them reports zero errors, and the other reports an odd crawl error.
Anyone encountered this type of thing before?
-
Try to fetch the url as Google bot and see if the issue still remains . If it does you might need to review your robots.txt file. Else it probably was some issue GoogleBot had while it tried to crawl the site.
You will need to setup both http://clientwebsite.com and http://www.clientwebsite.com to set the Preferred domain from GWT. so its ok to have both in there. But your site should ( in most cases ) only be accessible from either the one with www or without.
-
I agree with Bradley. The two accounts in GWT are separate, so the fact that you have two should not cause an interaction.
I once got a notification about a sudden drop in traffic to my home page was listed as a "Big traffic change for top URL". It happened on Thanksgiving. It was not an error, just people are not going to visit this particular site on Thanksgiving. More of a false positive than anything.Cheers!
-
I'm not sure that I've ever got a false notification before, but I got the exact notification you are describing a while back. It seemed as though there was a problem with the robots.txt file. Turns out the domain didn't have a robots.txt file, so rather than guess Google decided to stop crawling it until I created one.
If your site doesn't have a robots.txt file, make sure you create one. If the site already has one, look over it for syntax errors that Google may be tripping over.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Search Console not loading some resources
When I check an URL with Search Console it cannot load some page resources, even from other domains (like: ssl.google-analytics.com, www.facebook.com and www.google-analytics.com).
Reporting & Analytics | | TottiataHUN
Have any of you experienced this issue?
Steps to reproduce: open Google Search Console check an URL click "View crawled page" link select "More info" tab click "Page resources" {?}/{?} couldn't be loaded When I check the listed resources, all of them can be loaded from a web browser.
So I do not understand why Google cannot load them.
And there is no additional info why the resources could not be loaded.
Any ideas? google-search-console-other-error-1.png google-search-console-other-error-2.png0 -
Can not divide in different properties a domain in Search Console (Webmaster Tools)
Dear Moz Community, I hope you can give me a hand with the following questions. Im in charge of SEO of an ecommerce site in LATAM. It´s service is available in several countries, therefore each country has it subdirectory Eg. /ar /pe /co /bo /cl /br,etc... (in the future we will move to differente ccTLDs). I have been recomended to split or create different Search Console or Webmaster Tools properties (one for each subdirectory) but when Im creating a new property with a subdirectory, lets say www.domain.com/ar, Webmaster tools starts creating a property for www.domain.com/ar/ (NOTICE THE LAST SLASH) and it returns since that page doesn´t exist, what do you recomend me to do? Best wishes, Pablo Lòpez C
Reporting & Analytics | | pablo_carrara0 -
Identifying Bots in Google Analytics
Hi there, While you can now filter out bots and spiders in Google Analytics, I'm interested in how you identify a bots and spiders in the first place. For example, it used to be thought that Googlebot wouldn't appear in GA as it 'couldn't process Javascript' but now Google has announced new developments for its crawler with regards to interpreting javascript and CSS, this argument isn't as cut and dry. I'm not suggesting Googlebot appears in Google Analytics, but I am saying that you can't make the case that it won't appear only because it can't interpret JavaScript. So, I'm interested to see what metrics you use to identify a bot? For me, the mix of Users > Browser, Users > Operating System Version is still quite handy, but is it possible to identify individual bots and spiders within Google Analytics? And would Googlebot appear?
Reporting & Analytics | | ecommercebc0 -
How do you adjust the Google Analytics date range?
Hello! Every time I log into Google Analytics (via desktop), the date range is set to October 1, 2013 to October 28, 2013. I've looked throughout the GA settings to find a place where I change this default setting to anything else ("Last week?") but have not be able to find where that setting is. Can you help? Losing my mind,
Reporting & Analytics | | SmileMoreSEO
Erik0 -
Google Internal Search Tracking Kaput :-(
Buongiorno from cloudy & overcast Wetherby UK... On this site http://www.dartexcoatings.com/ I configured Google to tracdk internal search & heres how - http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/internal-search-jinx_zpscf86b49d.jpg But internal search data is not pulling through 😞 How can i fix this please.
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
Thanks,
David0 -
Registration tracking with Google Analytics
Hi everyone, I want to track user registrations with Google Analytics for a customer's website. The thing is after registration visitors are not directed to a specific page, so I can't set it as a goal. I thought of tracking submit button with event tracking, but that data would not be true as a visitor may click it more than once, and there's the login with facebook and twitter thing. Before convincig customer to create a registration confirmation page, I want to make sure there's no other way as they don't want to make any changes to the current website. Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | ugurcanuzer0 -
Google Analytics
Hello In Google analytics you can obtain the number of visits as a result of non-paid search. You can also set up custom reports to find the number of organic searches. The numbers are different, so what is the obvious difference between these two metrics that I'm missing. Thanks in advance for any assistance. Neil
Reporting & Analytics | | mccormackmorrison0 -
Does using Google URL Builder override original source in Google Analytics?
During a free trial on Tatango, we send daily emails to customers to give them advice, resources, etc. We started using Google URL Builder http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578 to create individual links in each of these emails, but when the customer purchases a subscription now, the source in GA isn't Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. they are all showing up as the source we created using the URL builder for each email. Does Google URL builder override the original source in Google Analytic?
Reporting & Analytics | | Tatango0