GWT False Reporting or GoogleBot has weird crawling ability?
-
Hi I hope someone can help me.
I have launched a new website and trying hard to make everything perfect. I have been using Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) to ensure everything is as it should be but the crawl errors being reported do not match my site. I mark them as fixed and then check again the next day and it reports the same or similar errors again the next day.
Example:
http://www.mydomain.com/category/article/ (this would be a correct structure for the site).
GWT reports:
http://www.mydomain.com/category/article/category/article/ 404 (It does not exist, never has and never will) I have been to the pages listed to be linking to this page and it does not have the links in this manner. I have checked the page source code and all links from the given pages are correct structure and it is impossible to replicate this type of crawl.
This happens accross most of the site, I have a few hundred pages all ending in a trailing slash and most pages of the site are reported in this manner making it look like I have close to 1000, 404 errors when I am not able to replicate this crawl using many different methods.
The site is using a htacess file with redirects and a rewrite condition.
Rewrite Condition:
Need to redirect when no trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !.(html|shtml)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ /$1/ [L,R=301]The above condition forces the trailing slash on folders.
Then we are using redirects in this manner:
Redirect 301 /article.html http://www.domain.com/article/
In addition to the above we had a development site whilst I was building the new site which was http://dev.slimandsave.co.uk now this had been spidered without my knowledge until it was too late. So when I put the site live I left the development domain in place (http://dev.domain.com) and redirected it like so:
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^ - [E=protossl]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteRule ^ - [E=protossl:s]RewriteRule ^ http%{ENV:protossl}://www.domain.com%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]</ifmodule>
Is there anything that I have done that would cause this type of redirect 'loop' ?
Any help greatly appreciated.\
-
Yeah - do this!
-
Anyone any thoughts on this?
-
Sorry I also should add that the url structure that google generates is like this:
http://www.domain.com/category/article/
http://www.domain.com/category/article/same-category/differentarticle/
http://www.domain.com/category/article/same-category/another-different-article/
http://www.domain.com/category/article/another-different-category/differentarticle/
etc, it is like it gets to a category article and then moves sideways and somehow adds the move onto the current url without keeping hold of the suffix of the URL
-
Doesn't sound like GWT is false reporting. May want to check your trailing slash URL rewrite. It seems like there is an issue there as what you are describing sounds like the URLs are being written incorrectly and causing the incorrect URLs to be generated and show up in GWT.
Your 301 looks ok and if the dev site was spidered and indexed, you should just add the site to GWT and then use the URL removal tool to remove the site from the index, then remove the site and redirect.
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
-
Weird 404 errors in Webmaster Tools
Hi, In a regular check with Webmaster Tools, I have noticed some weird 404 errors, for example, my domain URL is something like http://domainname.com/, the 404 error points to some weird URLs like http://domainname.com/james-bond&page=2/ and http://domainname.com/juegos-de&page=3/, at first I have tried to block them by robots.txt, but now I am getting these kind of 404 errors a lot, and don't think blocking them all is a perfect solution. Can anyone help me out with the issue? Thank you in advance.
Technical SEO | | nishthaj
cheers.0 -
Changed site to https now GWT and analytics - do I Know have to re-add it
Hi had the previous version (wordpress) site in GWT working just fine - now everything seems to have stopped. Do I have to treat this as an entirely new site and now add a new account for the https version? Many thanks,
Technical SEO | | AndreavanEugen0 -
Is there a way to see Crawl Errors older than 90 days in Webmaster Tools?
I had some big errors show up in November, but I can't see them anymore as the history only goes back 90 days. Is there a way to change the dates in Webmaster Tools? If not, is there another place I'd be able to get this information? We migrated our hosting to a new company around this time and the agency that handled it for us never downloaded a copy of all the redirects that were set-up on the old site.
Technical SEO | | b4cab0 -
Crawl Diagnostic: Notices about 301 redirects
There are detected five 301 redirects on my site and I want to understand why this is happening? And is this important to fix? http://domain.cl/subfolder ---- redirects to ----> http://domain.cl/subfolder/ What does this tell me "/" I am very curious 🙂 Thanks for every answer
Technical SEO | | inlinear
Holger0 -
Can SEOMoz crawl a single page as oppose to an entire subfolder?
I would like the following page to be crawled: http://www.ob.org/_programs/water/water_index.asp Instead, SEOMoz changes the page to the following subfolder which is an invalid url: http://www.ob.org/_programs/water/
Technical SEO | | OBIAnalytics0 -
Error Reporting
http://pro.seomoz.org/campaigns/33868/issues/18 Rel Canonical Found about 16 hours ago <dl> <dt>Tag value</dt> <dd>http://www.geeks.com/</dd> <dt>Description</dt> <dd>Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical.</dd> <dd>We do have rel canonical on some of the pages this report is recommending that we "fix" this issue.</dd> <dd> Rel Canonical Found about 16 hours ago <dl> <dt>Tag value</dt> <dd>http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=MBB</dd> <dt>Description</dt> <dd>Using rel=canonical suggests to search engines which URL should be seen as canonical.</dd> </dl> <a class="more expanded">Minimize</a> </dd> </dl>
Technical SEO | | JustinGeeks0 -
Geotargeting a folder in GWT & IP targeting
I am curently managing a .com that targets Canada and we will soon be launching a .com/us/ that will target the US. Once we launch the /us/ folder, we want to display the /us/ content to any US IP. My concern is that Google will then only index the /us/ content, as their IP is in the US. So, if I set up .com and .com/us/ as two different sites in GWT, and geotarget each to the Country it is targeting, will this take care of the problem and ensure that Google indexes the .com for Canada, and the /us/ for the US? Is there any alternative method (that does not include using the .ca domain)? I am concerned that Google would not be able to see the .com content if we are redirecting all US traffic to .com/us/. Any examples of this online anywhere?
Technical SEO | | bheard0