Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error.
-
Hello I'm a seo newbie and some help from the community here would be greatly appreciated.
I have submitted the sitemap of my website in google webmasters tools and now I got this warning:
"When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error. All accessible URLs will still be submitted."
How do I fix this? What should I do?
Many thanks in advance.
-
You need to confirm that the URLs are in fact 100% of your URLs going into the site map are accessible.
if it's a big issue in a big site send me the URL in a private message I will use deep crawl to create a XML sitemap for you. The screaming frog tool is excellent as well though does performance well with extremely large sites.
check your robots.txt file this so great tool if in case you have more than one (it happens)
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/robots-txt-generator/
or
http://tools.seochat.com/tools/robots-txt-validator/
so many great free tools are found right here http://tools.seochat.com/tools/
It could be a number of things although it could be Google being finicky. Run the site through Moz crawler, use feedthebot.com using "tools SEO" or download the free version of http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ this will tell you if there is an issue. If your site is static you can even create an alternate site map with screaming frog if your site is large use deep crawl or Moz analytics
be certain there are no sitemaps redirecting to each other so no redirects going from the old site map to the new site map. Make certain that the site map is in an XML format e.g. http://example.com/sitemap.xml or if in a different format like https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml make sure the proper format That resolves when you look at the site map is what is going into Webmaster tools. Be certain the site map does not contain over 500 URLs per the site map so example.com/sitemap1.xml and so on keep numbering them appropriately. sometimes Google is overloaded and does not seem to like to play well with certain site maps or the site map is maybe not generating very well on the server and that is fixed later on. If this is a long-term problem speak to your host or developer. My recommendation is if you've done everything I have talked about that you attempt to submit is the sitemap to to Webmaster tools or simply build a new sitemap and submit that.
so if worse comes to worse take the screaming frog and use this URL to send it to Google
http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/business-owner/
I hope that helps,
Thomas
-
Hi, It looks like you have url's placed in your sitemap that have an HTTP status error. You can search for the urls and remove them from your sitemap or make sure they have the right status. Does it say which status error? And does it say which url's? Did you check those url's?When you use Screaming frog spider tool (free), you can search for status error's this is an easy way to find these url's.
Grtz, Leonie
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
-
GoogleBot still crawling HTTP/1.1 years after website moved to HTTP/2
Whole website moved to https://www. HTTP/2 version 3 years ago. When we review log files, it is clear that - for the home page - GoogleBot continues to only access via HTTP/1.1 protocol Robots file is correct (simply allowing all and referring to https://www. sitemap Sitemap is referencing https://www. pages including homepage Hosting provider has confirmed server is correctly configured to support HTTP/2 and provided evidence of accessing via HTTP/2 working 301 redirects set up for non-secure and non-www versions of website all to https://www. version Not using a CDN or proxy GSC reports home page as correctly indexed (with https://www. version canonicalised) but does still have the non-secure version of website as the referring page in the Discovery section. GSC also reports homepage as being crawled every day or so. Totally understand it can take time to update index, but we are at a complete loss to understand why GoogleBot continues to only go through HTTP/1.1 version not 2 Possibly related issue - and of course what is causing concern - is that new pages of site seem to index and perform well in SERP ... except home page. This never makes it to page 1 (other than for brand name) despite rating multiples higher in terms of content, speed etc than other pages which still get indexed in preference to home page. Any thoughts, further tests, ideas, direction or anything will be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | May 13, 2024, 8:42 AM | AKCAC1 -
URL path randomly changing
Hi eveyone, got a quick question about URL structures: I'm currently working in ecommerce with a site that has hundreds of products that can be accessed through different URL paths: 1)www.domain.com/productx 2)www.domain.com/category/productx 3)www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx 4)www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx 5)... In order to get rid of dublicate content issues, the canoncial tag has been installed on all the pages required. The problem I'm witnessing now is the following: If a visitor comes to the site and navigates to the product through example 2) at time the URL shown in the URL browser box is example 4), sometimes example 1) or whatever. So it is constantly changing. Does anyone know, why this happens and if it has any impact on GA tracking or even on SEO peformance. Any reply is much appreciated Thanks you
Technical SEO | Jun 28, 2015, 4:50 AM | ennovators0 -
Numbers in URL
Hey guys! Need your many awesome brains. 🙂 This may be a very basic question but am hoping you can help me out with some insights beyond "because Google says it's better". 🙂 I only recently started working with SEO, and I work for a SaaS website builder company that has millions of open/active user sites, and all our user sites URLs, instead of www.mydomainname.com/gallery or myusername.simplesite.com/about, we use numbers, so www.mysite.com/453112 or myusername.simplesite.com/426521 The Sales manager has asked me to figure out if it will pay off for us in terms of traffic (other benefits?) to change it from the number system to the "proper" and right way of setting up these URLs. He's looking for rather concrete answers, as he usually sits with paid search and is therefore used to the mindset of "if we do x it will yield us y in z months". I'm finding it quite difficult to find case studies/other concrete examples beyond the generic, vague implication that it will simply be "better" (when for example looking at SEO checklists and search engine guidelines). Will it make a difference? How so? I have to convince our developers of the importance and priority of this adjustment, or it will just drown in the many projects they already have. So truly, any insights would be so very welcome. Thank you!
Technical SEO | May 29, 2015, 7:01 PM | michelledemaree2 -
Which Sitemap to keep - Http or https (or both)
Hi, Just finished upgrading my site to the ssl version (like so many other webmasters now that it may be a ranking factor). FIxed all links, CDN links are now secure, etc and 301 Redirected all pages from http to https. Changed property in Google Analytics from http to https and added https version in Webmaster Tools. So far, so good. Now the question is should I add the https version of the sitemap in the new HTTPS site in webmasters or retain the existing http one? Ideally switching over completely to https version by adding a new sitemap would make more sense as the http version of the sitemap would anyways now be re-directed to HTTPS. But the last thing i can is to get penalized for duplicate content. Could you please suggest as I am still a rookie in this department. If I should add the https sitemap version in the new site, should i delete the old http one or no harm retaining it.
Technical SEO | Dec 6, 2014, 3:28 PM | ashishb010 -
Special characters in URL
Will registered trademark symbol within a URL be bad? I know some special characters are unsafe (#, >, etc.) but can not find anything that mentions registered trademark. Thanks!
Technical SEO | Dec 10, 2013, 9:54 PM | bonnierSEO0 -
429 Errors?
I have over 500,000 429 errors in webmaster tools. Do I need to be concerned about these errors?
Technical SEO | Nov 19, 2014, 1:08 PM | TheKrazyCouponLady0 -
Landing Page URL Structure
We are finally setting up landing pages to support our PPC campaigns. There has been some debate internally about the URL structure. Originally we were planning on URL's like: domain.com /california /florida /ny I would prefer to have the URL's for each state inside a "state" folder like: domain.com /state /california /florida /ny I like having the folders and pages for each state under a parent folder to keep the root folder as clean as possible. Having a folder or file for each state in the root will be very messy. Before you scream URL rewriting :-). Our current site is still running under Classic ASP which doesn't support URL rewriting. We have tried to use HeliconTech's ISAPI rewrite module for IIS but had to remove it because of too many configuration issues. Next year when our coding to MVC is complete we will use URL rewriting. So the question for now: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to one URL structure over the other?
Technical SEO | Oct 13, 2012, 2:03 AM | briankb0 -
Drupal URL Aliases vs 301 Redirects + Do URL Aliases create duplicates?
Hi all! I have just begun work on a Drupal site which heavily uses the URL Aliases feature. I fear that it is creating duplicate links. For example:: we have http://www.URL.com/index.php and http://www.URL.com/ In addition we are about to switch a lot of links and want to keep the search engine benefit. Am I right in thinking URL aliases change the URL, while leaving the old URL live and without creating search engine friendly redirects such as 301s? Thanks for any help! Christian
Technical SEO | Nov 11, 2011, 5:29 AM | ChristianMKTG0