Why are Seemingly Randomly Generated URLs Appearing as Errors in Google Webmaster Tools?
-
I've been confused by some URLs that are showing up as errors in our GWT account. They seem to just be randomly generated alphanumeric strings that Google is reporting as 404 errors. The pages do 404 because nothing ever existed there or was linked to. Here are some examples that are just off of our root domain:
/JEzjLs2wBR0D6wILPy0RCkM/WFRnUK9JrDyRoVCnR8=
/MevaBpcKoXnbHJpoTI5P42QPmQpjEPBlYffwY8Mc5I=
/YAKM15iU846X/ymikGEPsdq 26PUoIYSwfb8 FBh34=
I haven't been able to track down these character strings in any internet index or anywhere in our source code so I have no idea why Google is reporting them.
We've been pretty vigilant lately about duplicate content and thin content issues and my concern is that there are an unspecified number of urls like this that Google thinks exist but don't really.
Has anyone else seen GWT reporting errors like this for their site? Does anyone have any clue why Google would report them as errors?
-
Glad to hear you located the root cause of the issue.
-
Update: I think I found the source of the errors. We have a form submission box on every page of our site and there are random alphanumeric strings that are unique to every page that look like these urls that Google is reporting as errors. Maybe Google is trying to use our form submission tool.
It's still really odd that Google would think they are urls and report them as errors since they appear in an tag not an <a> tag</a>
<a>```
<input id="authenticity_token" name="authenticity_token" type="hidden" value="ElCkBCszxMddaqVyVIx+flkzRlM9xb7mHb3cFISlJvY=" /> -
The next step would be to check Google WMT > Diagnostics > Crawl errors > Not Found tab
Click the "Linked from Detected" text. That will show the source of the link.
-
That's not the case. We have an in house content system and no shopping cart. These urls return a 404 error and always have because they've never existed.
No crawlers have returned urls that look like this either. I can't get these urls to show up in Google's index either.
-
Hi Jimmy,
My bet is you are using a CMS or Shopping Cart on your site. The software is generating these seemingly random URLs, and the Google crawler is seeing them.
Crawlers don't move through your site the way people do. If you take your home page and right-click, then choose View Page Source, you will find many URLs. The crawler will then follow each and every URL throughout your site. The URLs you are seeing could be generated on any given page.
To track the issue, use the SEOmoz crawler on your site, then analyze the results. When you find these types of URLs, take note of the page they are located on.
Alternatively, you can contact your CMS or shopping cart's software developer and inquire about the URLs. If these URLs show a folder path before the random characters, that information can help track down which pages or software is generating these pages.
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
-
Google Analytics Campaign Tracking overriding each other
Howdy, fellow mozzers. So, here is the situation: Let's say someone comes to the website through Organic Google Search, and first thing they see is the banner on the website, on a click of which it takes you to a promotional landing page. I have this banner being tracked with GA campaigns. Now, here are my questions: If that user makes a purchase, which source / medium it will be assigned to? Organic/google or website/banner? (as far as i understand it assigns it to website/banner) If that's the case, is there way to find out afterwords where the website/banner sessions came initially from? If there is no such way, how shall i setup the tracking to be able to see wherre the initial visit to the website came from, yet also track how many people clicked on the banner and made a purchase? Thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | DmitriiK0 -
Accidental Link not being removed by Google WMT
I operate two sites for a client. One is a local business and one is their national business. I used the same template for both sites (with changes) but accidentally left a link in the footer to the local site. Now the local site is showing 12k backlinks from the national site. I removed the link over 2 weeks ago but it still shows up in Google WMT in the "Links to your Site" section. It goes to a coupon page and not a "targeted" page but 12k links to the local site is 6 TIMES what I had before. My question is: "Is there a way to get Google to remove the link from Google WMT?" More specifically force it. Like I said the link has been removed for over 2 weeks but it still shows up in the Local site's Incoming Links section of WMT. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | DarinPirkey0 -
Webmaster tools crawl errors
Hi there, iv been tracking my webmaster tools crawl errors for a while now(6 months) and im noticing some pages that are far gone 404 are still poping out on the crawl errors. - that pages have no data for xml linking, and remote linking are from pages that are far gone 404 also. that pages have 404 error page + redirect to homepage, and google still notice them with old cache content. does someone have a clue why is this happening?
Reporting & Analytics | | Or.Shvartz0 -
Google analytics settings
Hi I have GA installed, whaen I try to use Inpage Analytics, I get this message: We've identified problems in your setup. These may cause problems loading In-Page Analytics. Error: The Website in your settings (http://www.tvorba-logo-firmy.sk) redirects into a different domain. (http://tvorba-logo-firmy.sk). In-Page Analytics currently works on only one domain. Note that www.example.com and example.com are NOT considered to be on the same domain. Also, make sure you're not redirecting from http:// to https:// or vice versa My website is running on wordpress. Thanks for help.
Reporting & Analytics | | info_tipovanie-stavkovanie.com0 -
Google Analytics Myth?
Dear Moz-members, I have read several discussions regarding not to implement Google analytics on your website. Reason: Google is tracking your website behavior, for example you have a high bounce rate it will affect your rankings negative. See it as we are opening the doors too much to Google so it can have a negative impact on your online business, especially when your site is new and you are still building your credit. Because of this i have not chosen to install GA. What is your experience with this? Most of the time if i read analytics posts at Seomoz, people do have GA installed. I am also in doubt whether to switch over at GA, but then again mine site is relative new and i am still working on the negative bounce rate/daily visitors. Would like to hear from you pro's whether this is a myth or not 🙂 Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | mcweb0 -
How do I best segment tablets on Google Analytics
I would like to find a way to best segment out my tablet traffic to measure performance; however I'm finding that there are road blocks. It doesn't seem that device operating systems or screen resolutions have clear cut differences in the tablet/mobile versions. Has anyone here found a good way to create a "tablet" segment in Google Analytics? Right now I'm having to lean on solely the ipad traffic to get indicators of tablet performance. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | lvstrickland0 -
How to measure number of visits from Google News coming from Google Universal Search (NOT referral coming directly coming from news.google.com) with google analyitcs
I'm running a news site, and I have a problem of accuratly measuring which traffic is REALLY coming from google news. I analyzed a lot of individual articles and I come to the conclusion, that the visits, that come from the google news section in the universal search results are counted as "normal" search engine traffic in google analytics. So if you do a Google search for a topic that includes links from Google news, you don't get an accurate referral count. As an example, if you do a search for "eBay", incorporated into the page 1 search results you may also see Google news results as well.
Reporting & Analytics | | Mulle
If someone clicks on that Google news link that appears in Google search, it shows up in Google analytics as a referral from Google search, when it was actually from a Google news referral. I was already checking google analytics and google news help forums and searched SEO blogs for this. But I wasn't able to find a working solution. Can anybody help me out with this problem? Thanks so much, Matthias0