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
-
Unsolved Google Ads Subdomain in sitelinks & Composition Change for Strategy Status
I have a basic query but could not find a definite answer on the internet. I am currently running a campaign for the main website of a big education brand and they also have a secondary learning website on subdomain, and I want to add sitelinks of subdomain to the campaign, but I am not sure whether it is allowed or not. The brand I am running ads for is https://www.rauias.com/ and the secondary website is https://compass.rauias.com/ branded slightly different in a subdomain, so should I add the sitelinks of Compass to the main campaign? Also one more silly question My Max Conversion search campaign gave me this status today. "Learning (composition change): Campaigns have been added to or removed from the bid strategy. Google Ads is now adjusting to optimize bids. 5 days left for learning" What does this mean exactly? And Why does it reenter the learning phase whenever I make a small change?
Paid Search Marketing | | rauoff0 -
How to deal with the InCorrect Price Issue for the Google Shopping Product Listing Ads?
Hello All, Yesterday when i was checking with the one of the search term for "canvas prints"..i come to know that one of the advertiser EasyCanvasPrints.com is showing Incorrect price. On Search result they guys are showing $7.46 incorrect price for the PLA - Product listing ads. Go to below links: https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=webhp&tbs=vw:l,mr:1,seller:8521978&tbm=shop&q=canvas+prints&sa=X&ved=0CJkGELMrahUKEwjmj-PSgfzIAhUHBY4KHc0VBBQ https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=canvas+prints&tbm=shop https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=canvas+prints&start=0 But when we click on it then i can not this price $7.46 http://www.easycanvasprints.com/single-canvas?singlecanvas=1&height=19&width=14&pcode=5345334C6B74647246774137536C786768544B5458776C35644F747855796D39&utm_source=google_base&utm_medium=data_feed I have done various claim and send to Google support about this misguiding price for the Easy Canvas Prints but they not taking any actions on it. Guy Can u please help me how can i pass this message to Google to take actions for this advertiser? Waiting for your reply Regards Dinesh
Paid Search Marketing | | CommercePundit0 -
Blocking google adwords on google.com?
Is there any chance to block google adwords (not google adsense) firefox/chrome/internet explorer 🙂
Paid Search Marketing | | FCRMediaLietuva0 -
Why does my google analytics show a massive discrepancy from facebook's reported website clicks?
We're running a Facebook news feed ad that is pointing at our homepage. Facebook says that for yesterday there were 47 website clicks. Google analytics shows 15 total visitors from facebook with 3 of them landing on the homepage. I understand that there is likely going to be some discrepancy with users accidentally clicking and clicking back before the page loads, but this seems a little insane. I tested the ad using a page that pulls the Analytics cookie data using php and it is working properly so I don't understand what's happening. The url isn't tagged with utm parameters, which is going to be fixed. Anyone experience this or have any insight as to what could be this issue? Is this click fraud? Edit: For more clarification I was checking on my completely unfiltered google analytics profile/view.
Paid Search Marketing | | spencerhjustice0 -
How Can I Target Certain Countries in Google AdWords without Excluding Other Countries?
So, here is the situation: Our company works with merchants worldwide (with the exception of those who live in excluded high-risk countries--mostly in Africa), but most of our Google AdWords leads come from Indian merchants. My CEO wants our campaigns to convert leads from other countries (i.e., the UK, Germany, US, Canada, Australia, etc.), but I have no idea how to do that without excluding India. However, my CEO does not want to exclude India from our AdWords campaigns as the leads are profitable. We simply want more diversity with out leads in terms of geographic location. I am sure there are resources on the Web about how to do this, but I am not an Adwords expert and am unsure of what phrases to search to find the answers. Direct advice or helpful links are much appreciated. Regards,
Paid Search Marketing | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
Doing Google Places for customer - best solution?
I work at a media agency in Denmark and I'm trying to open a Google Places-account for one of our retail-customers which is to be linked to the customers AdWords-account. I created a Places account and via bulk upload I submitted the customers 74 locations. I was then asked to verify my bulk upload, which I did. That's two weeks ago, and I've tried to get help from our Google contact but to little avail. Could the problem be that I am doing the places account on behalf of our customer, and thus when I am asked to verify the upload I supply my own information (contact phone and business name) rather than the customers? Have any of you had a similar experience? Is there an alternate path I can take to solve this?
Paid Search Marketing | | Iumreprise0 -
Your Google AdWords account has been permanently suspended for repeated violation of AdWords or Landing Page and Site policies in this or a related account.
My client nor I received any warning. We even had a google adwords team optimize the account and my rep does not yet know the reason for the ban. Not sure if its related but their google organic rankings dropped significantly at the same time. https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164786 Any advice here? Do these Questions get indexed by google? I will ask my client if I can disclose the domain. Is there any way around a permanent ban? They were spending 50K per month. Is this enough to have any clout?
Paid Search Marketing | | webbroi0 -
Adwords Quality Score and On-Page SEO
I'm trying to convince a large, multinational company that is very resistant to change, into making my on-page SEO changes. Compounding this resistance is the fact that the Analytics, SEO, PPC, and web dev departments are all under different people and they don't communicate very well. So, in order to get them to work together, I've decided to appeal to the places where they are sensitive; e.g., the PPC department where they surely have the desire to be more efficient with their budget. To appeal to this sensitivity, and with my goal of getting on-page changes done to help the SEO dept, I'm considering making the argument that my on-page changes will raise their quality score which will in turn lower the amount they are spending on PPC. Basically, is this a fair argument? Do you have an evidence to back this up? Best in the Midwest, Phil p.s. Hi, Joanna 😉
Paid Search Marketing | | PapaRelevance0