URL Errors in webmaster tools to pages that don't exist?
-
Hello, for sometime now we have URLs showing up in Google webmaster saying these are 404 errors but don't exist on our website.......but also never have?
Heres an example
cosmetic-dentistry/28yearold-southport-dentist-wins-best-young-dentist-award/801530293
The root being this goo.gl/vi4N4F
Really confused about this? We have recently made our website wordpress?
Thanks
Ade
-
Ok great, thanks for your advice Linda, have a nice day.!
-
Sometimes people make pages like that as landing pages for PPC or other types of campaigns and then abandon them.
I found one like that on one of my sites once by noticing that a page I did not recognize was getting a lot of search traffic--I ended up integrating it into my structure with a new URL, and 301 redirecting the old URL to that new page.
If you think those might be good pages for you, different from similar pages you might already have, you can update them and do that as well.
If they are not especially useful to you, you could just 301 them to the most similar pages. [Are they getting traffic? I think Google must see something in them, if they are still indexed.] They probably wouldn't do any harm if you just leave them, but I'd take care of them anyway.
-
Ok great, thanks Linda, its odd because Google isn't saying where its linked or they are linked from like it normally does.
Did you see this question
would this page http://goo.gl/YoPg0q and this page http://goo.gl/kRq0Pd be classed as ghosting? this wasn't the intention but Ive come across this page whilst doing some site research from along time ago and wondering if it would effect my ranking? Should i put a 301 or do you think its ok to leave?
Thanks, i appreciate your feedback.
-
Sometimes when people link to you, they make a mistake (or even make up pages from what I can tell--I have seen some weird things). In that case, Google will still try to look for it and report back to you that it saw a link to such a page somewhere. [In Webmaster Tools, you will be able to see the referring site.]
What I do in a case like that is ignore it, unless it seems to be from a good site. In that case, I contact the site with a correct link and if I get no reply, I just create a redirect of the link to a relevant page.
-
Hi, yes this is what i mean, this is why I'm so confused by it. It has never been a page on the website, we've checked an triple checked this.
-
A 404 is not a redirect, it means not found. So it is probably the case that someone linked to that page when it was up and Google is following that old link and not finding the page.
-
Sorry Linda, just re-read when you say 301, its in google webmaster tools that its saying 404 error?
Thanks
-
Brilliant, thanks Moz guys, its helpful. One other question as i have you...
would this page http://goo.gl/YoPg0q and this page http://goo.gl/kRq0Pd be classed as ghosting? this wasn't the intention but Ive come across this page whilst doing some site research from along time ago and wondering if it would effect my ranking? Should i put a 301 or do you think its ok to leave? Thanks
-
You mean a 301 redirect? If one of the duplicates is already 301 redirected to the other, like Jaime said, just mark it fixed. [Though if it comes back up, take another look at it, because it means that Google is not seeing the fix you think you made.]
As far as affecting your SEO, duplication can cause the less relevant duplicate to not show up in search but does not cause any penalty as such. [Though make sure your internal linking uses your correct and current URLs.]
-
Ok thanks, Oddly in webmaster tools it shows HTML improvements as duplicate title tags:
/clinic_locations.html
/uk-clinics-luton-wolverhampton-locations/But the .html hasn't been around for ages, maybe 2 years? It has a 404 re-direct. Im wondering 2 things. Should I ignore this and will it be effecting my seo and if so is there any more i can do about it?
Thanks
-
This is likely just a URL from your old website structure that somebody has put a link to somewhere out there on the web (Possibly incorrectly with a typo). I would 301 redirect to the most relevant page you have on the Wordpress site and mark it as Fixed on WMT.
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
-
Magento 1.9 SEO. I have product pages with identical On Page SEO score in the 90's. Some pull up Google page 1 some won't pull up at all. I am searching for the exact title on that page.
I have a website built on Magento 1.9. There are approximately 290,000 part numbers on the site. I am sampling Google SERP results. About 20% of the keywords show up on page 1 position 5 thru 10. 80% don't show up at all. When I do a MOZ page score I get high 80's to 90's. A page score of 89 on one part # may show up on page one, An identical page score on a different part # can't be found on Google. I am searching for the exact part # in the page title. Any thoughts on what may be going on? This seems to me like a Magento SEO issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTOPDS0 -
H1 tag found on page, but saying doesn't match keyword
We've run a on-page grader test on our home page www.whichledlight.com with the keyword 'led bulbs' it comes back with saying there is a H1 tag, although the content of the keyword apperently doesn't contain 'led bulbs... which seems a bit odd because the content of the tag is 'UK’s #1 Price Comparison Site for LED Bulbs` I've used other SEO checkers and some say we don't even have a H1 tag, or H2, H3 and so on for any page. Screaming Frog seems to think we have a H1 tag though, and can also detect the content of the tag. Any ideas? ** Update ** The website is a single page app (EmberJS) so we use prerender to create snapshots of the pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup
We were under the impression that MOZ can crawl these prerendered pages fine, so were a bit baffled as to why it would say we have a H1 tag, but think the contents of the tag still doesn't match our keyword.0 -
Why Is Google Webmaster Tools Pulling Zero Keyword Data?
I just linked a Google Webmaster Tools account to Google Analytics for a client, and Search Engine Optimization reports are showing up in Google Analytics as enabled, but there is zero keyword data, landing page data, etc., in the reports themselves. Has anyone encountered this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yoursearchteam0 -
My blog's categories are winning over my landing pages, what to do?
Hi My blogs categories for the ecommerce site are by subject and are similar to the product landing pages. Example Domain.com/laptops that sells laptops Domain.com/blog/laptops that shows news and articles on laptops Within the blog posts the links of anchor laptop are to the store. What to do? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet1 -
Webmaster Tools Content Keywords & Meta Tagging
In Webmaster tools , Content keywords give an indication of what Google thinks a site is about. This site is a health site ( online shopping - health supplements ) - but one of the terms it thinks the site is about is "Dollar" . I'm guessing this is because on every page there is Currency Selection from multiple currencies. How do I tell Google that this part of the page is nothing to do with what my site is about? Thanks for your reply in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Remove URLs that 301 Redirect from Google's Index
I'm working with a client who has 301 redirected thousands of URLs from their primary subdomain to a new subdomain (these are unimportant pages with regards to link equity). These URLs are still appearing in Google's results under the primary domain, rather than the new subdomain. This is problematic because it's creating an artificial index bloat issue. These URLs make up over 90% of the URLs indexed. My experience has been that URLs that have been 301 redirected are removed from the index over time and replaced by the new destination URL. But it has been several months, close to a year even, and they're still in the index. Any recommendations on how to speed up the process of removing the 301 redirected URLs from Google's index? Will Google, or any search engine for that matter, process a noindex meta tag if the URL's been redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trung.ngo0 -
Will Canonical tag on parameter URLs remove those URL's from Index, and preserve link juice?
My website has 43,000 pages indexed by Google. Almost all of these pages are URLs that have parameters in them, creating duplicate content. I have external links pointing to those URLs that have parameters in them. If I add the canonical tag to these parameter URLs, will that remove those pages from the Google index, or do I need to do something more to remove those pages from the index? Ex: www.website.com/boats/show/tuna-fishing/?TID=shkfsvdi_dc%ficol (has link pointing here)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | partnerf
www.website.com/boats/show/tuna-fishing/ (canonical URL) Thanks for your help. Rob0 -
Why is my Crawl Report Showing Thousands of Pages that Do Not Exist?
Hi, I just downloaded a Crawl Summary Report for a client's website. I am seeing THOUSANDS of duplicate page content errors. The overwhelming majority of them look something like this: ERROR: http://www.earlyinterventionsupport.com/resources/parentingtips/development/parentingtips/development/development/development/development/development/development/parentingtips/specialneeds/default.aspx This page doesn't exist and results in a 404 page. Why are these pages showing up? How do I get rid of them? Are they endangering the health of my site as a whole? Thank you, Jenna <colgroup><col width="1051"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JennaCMag
| |0