Google Giving 404 Errors to Working Pages
-
We have a problem that just came up out of the blue with Google, in particular Webmaster Tools & our Merchant Center. We're getting a 404 errors for 1000s of pages in both of these applications, but the pages are working just fine. Our shopping campaigns have been hit hard as many of our top products have been suspended from our merchant feed. Webmaster tools is giving us 1000s of 404 errors to product & category pages alike. But every page returning a 404 error is working. We've contacted Google and they mention that they are not getting a 404 error, but their crawler seems to be. Has anyone ever experienced this? What could be causing this?
Thanks for any input.
-
Hi Paul, what is the status of this issue? Has it been resolved, or not? Would love an update! Thanks ~ Christy
-
Yes, attackers use code injection techniques to hijack search results. They in fact do use some randomization techniques to make it harder to detect. Conducting a security scan using a tool like Sucuri.net could be helpful but manually reviewing your .htaccess and code may be necessary.
-
Thanks jeff-rackaid.com.
The idea of some sort of fowl play did cross our minds. These errors seemed to appear out of the blue without any significant code changes on our side.
We have done a fetch as Googlebot on a number of pages. We had found that the returns have been inconsistent; we would fetch a particular page and get a "Not found" error one minute and then a "complete" result the next minute. I don't think this is a normal activity.
We've also been tracking the traffic of Googlebot to our site and since Thursday (8/14), the hits from GoogleBot have been going down while the hits from an "unknown bot" have been increasing.
-
This could just be a WMT error. I've seen this from time to time. If it persists for more than 24 hours, then you may want to try digging into it further.
Have you tried fetching as Googlebot
In doing server security work, I have seen some hijacking attempts that will send 301 responses to Googlebot. In some cases, these scripts are improperly deployed resulting in 404 errors or 500 errors. So I would first fetch the site as Googlebot.
Then examine your server's access logs for hits from Googlebot. Confirm that it is indeed Googlebot. You can verify Googlebot IP ranges with reverse DNS:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/80553?hl=en
If there's no foul play, then check for any browser-based detections routines. With the increasing use of mobile, I have seen some code fail to handle bots correctly. The behavior is usually an error not a 404. However, many CMS systemincorrectly send 404 errors for a variety of errors and not just true not found status codes.
-
On Aug 16th i got a similar error mydomain.com/page/feed/ is all giving 404 errors I look at the xml and it shows an xml with title tags it has the site name - page not found. but the feed pages is not index in google.
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
-
100+ PPC Landing Pages Linking To Main URL... Hurting My SEO?
I started another thread around this question but don't think I was articulate enough. So, I have over 100 various landing pages that I use for targeted PPC. I don't really have any interest in these pages amassing their own SEO value; I simply use them for my PPC accounts. However, they all link back to my home page. Is this considered a link farm? And, if so, is the best option to simply add a nofollow attribute to all the links pointing to my home page? Would there be any reason to keep the links as follow? I don't think they're giving my site any SEO value but I'm concerned that they could be harming it instead. Any expert advice would be much appreciated.
Paid Search Marketing | | jfishe19880 -
Google AdWords Class Action Settlement?
Has anyone received and responded to a notice of class action settlement from Google Adwords? The sender (and the website it directs to) is adwordsclassaction.com. I see that there was such a thing, I am just not sure whether that domain is the official one to respond to?
Paid Search Marketing | | Linda-Vassily0 -
Google Product Ads
Hi,
Paid Search Marketing | | ChrisHolgate
I was wondering if I could ask is perhaps someone could give me some clarification as to how the amount we bid on Google Product Ads reflects the product positioning on Google Shopping? We have a Google Product Data Feed which is then linked up to our Adwords account so that we can determine a PPC bid amount. In instances like this it doesn't seem to make sense that one person may be paying 10ppc and another 20ppc when the buyers criteria for sorting merchants was purely down to the price. Since the buyer has the option to sort their products in price from minimum to maximum the sort order cannot be manipulated by Google based on the amount the merchant was paying. As such, how is determining a cost per click figure relevant when the customer is searching by base price low > high on Google Shopping? Surely I should just set the limit to £0.01 and rely on the customer determining the sort order (which ultimately will lead to a higher conversion rate) than allowing Google to skew the results based on bidding 20-30 times this amount? I should state that I'm in the UK. I do realise that a high PPC amount will increase our chance of exposure on standard search pages but my question does relate solely to results listed on Google Shopping. Thanks for your help! Chris0 -
Google Shopping Feed being blocked by robots.txt
I had created a manual Google Shopping Feed that was working fine, and then someone well meaning put a block in my robots.txt file so Google couldn't read the images folder. because of this, Google now won't accept my feed. I changed the robots.txt file to allow them to read the images again, but it's been 3 days now and I'm still getting the error saying my products are disallowed because the robots.txt file won't let them scan for images. Does anyone know how long it will take for Google to see it again?
Paid Search Marketing | | sparrowdog0 -
Best practice to separate paid from organic conversions in Google Analytics
I have a PPC campaign for a client with standalone landing pages with a form, not reachable from the website (although in the same domain). I've added the AdWords conversion code to the "thank you" page and I also added a Goal in
Paid Search Marketing | | DoMiSoL
Google Analytics whose counter is increased every time the thank you page is reached. This way I can track conversions with both AdWords and Analytics. Is that correct? Should I import back in AdWords the goals from Analytics, as suggested in the AdWords account? I have another landing page with a form in the website, where I send users coming from
organic search, so I set up a second goal in Analytics for the thank you page of this form. Is this the reason why I am supposed to import in AdWords the analytics' goals, so that I could see both kind of conversions in both accounts? But the most important question is: If I send both PPC/organic visitors to the same landing page is there still a way to separate PPC from Organic conversions? Thank you very much for your advice. DoMiSoL Rossini0 -
Using the same landing page for seo and ppc
When does it make sense to create one landing page for both seo and ppc?
Paid Search Marketing | | melen0 -
PPC Landing Pages and Rel Canonical
Hi Mozzers! Our company has hundreds of PPC landing pages which are essentially request a quote forms. We also have a request a quote form on our website that is for regular traffic. Currently we just added the "noindex" meta tag to all our PPC landing pages, but I think we can improve this. Should we remove the "noindex" tag, and instead add a rel canonical link pointing to our "main" request a quote form? Thoughts?
Paid Search Marketing | | Travis-W0 -
Google PPC - coupon balances
So, I know that you can't simply transfer a coupon credit in Google AdWords to another account. My question, if anyone knows, is there a way to do this using My Client Center? We manage multiple accounts, and have another coming on board that has a pre-existing coupon credit. We were going to set up a new account (which we would handle billing for and just invoice) for the client. But, that would leave them unable to use a coupon code. If it's managed under MCC, is there a way to work around this?
Paid Search Marketing | | DeliaAssociates0