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.
500 errors and impact on google rankings
-
Since the launch of our newly designed website about 6 months ago, we are experiencing a high number of 500 server errors (>2000).
Attempts to resolve these errors have been unsuccessful to date. We have just started to notice a consistent and sustained drop in rankings despite our hard sought efforts to correct.
Two questions... can very high levels of 500 errors adversely effect our google rankings?
And, if this is the case, what type of specialist (what are they called) has expertise to investigate and fix this issue.
I should also mention that the sitemap also goes down on a regular basis, which some have stated is due to the size of the site (>500 pages). Don't know if they're part of the same problem?
Thanks.
-
Hi Ryan,
I suggest creating a new Q&A question for your specific question, and include what details you can about the errors you are seeing and the URL of your site, if you can.
-
I'm having a similar issue. I take it this means that I need to move off Godaddy hosting and use something more advanced? Is this a correct way to resolve the issue?
-
Your sitemap is returning a application/xml content type, this should be text/xml
and your 500 errors are
The URI you submitted has disallowed characters
See more details in email
-
Hi ahw,
A 500 Server Error is generally caused by one of two things:
- A hardware error in the server itself
- A software error - something in the code which causes the server to barf
From your description, it sounds like the 500 errors may be appearing intermittently - ie a page is Ok, then errors, then is Ok etc.... This would tend to suggest that the problem is a hardware fault, but it is still possible that it may be caused by random code which is not encountered every time a page is loaded.
The most reliable way to determine which problem you have is to check whether you are experiencing the 500 errors with a static file - ie an image, video, pdf, xml, css etc. If you are seeing the error with a static file, then the problem is 100% Server hardware fault (or Server misconfiguration, but this should return a permanent 500 Error).
If "the sitemap also goes down on a regular basis", means that your sitemap also is intermittently returning a 500 Error and it is a static xml file, that may be your clue.
If yours is a LAMP based system (Apache/Linux) and you have root access to your Server, my boss is a Systems Administrator and able to take a look at it for you, but his gut feeling is that you are looking at a hardware problem. This means your best course of action would be to contact your Hosting provider as soon as possible and ask them to take a look at it.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
I agree with Alan.
As for the sitemap, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "goes down on a regular basis" - as in # of pages indexed by Google? And if some of those URLs are part of the 500 error list, then it makes sense that the # of pages Google indexed would go down as if Google can't index a page then it doesn't matter if it's listed in the sitemap as it can't be crawled.
-
Yes 500 errors will affect ranking, SE like a site that is well mainated, obviosly they dont want to send users to a error page.
Can we get a url, I will take a look, and may be able to advice you.
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
-
Strange landing page in Google Analytics
Hello MOZ Community, The website in question is https://x-y.com/ When i looked at the landing pages report in GA , x-y.com is appended at the end of every URL like this. https://x-y.com/x-y.com When i open the above URL in GA interface, it shows page not found. This is obvious as there is no such URL.
Reporting & Analytics | | Johnroger
The metrics like sessions, Users, Bounce rate all look good. In the property settings, The default URL is written like this http:// cell-gate.com (Please note that s is missing in property settings). But how is traffic tracked correctly How do i solve this problem. What settings should we change to make the landing pages report look ok Thanks0 -
Tracking 301 redirect traffic in Google Analytics
if I 301 redirect www.mywebsite.com to go to www.yourwebsite.com, how can I track the traffic in Google Analytics that is coming from mywebsite.com?? I don't think that's a referral traffic, is it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Armen-SEO0 -
% Change - Google analytics - how to calculate?
Hi All,
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnPalmer
I have two dates with two different numbers I want to calculate the "% Change" like google analytics, The numbers of June 2015 - 127,931 sessions
The numbers of June 2014 - 90914 sessions please tell me what is the %Change. Best. J0 -
Title Tag Capitalization Impact on SERP Rankings and Click Through Rates
My company made a branding decision to use lowercase for all of our title tags. This, of course, means that our titles on SERPs are all lower case. Overwhelmingly, it seems that websites use title case. This makes me wonder if we're shooting ourselves in the foot. Does using lower case titles negatively impact our rankings and/or click through rates? Is there any data out there suggesting that title case has a better click through rate than lower case? Thanks for reading!
Reporting & Analytics | | Solid_Gold0 -
Comparing % Change, Google Analytics
Hey Mozzers, Is there a simple way to compare the "% Change" in traffic when comparing two separate time periods in a single Google Analytics report? When comparing data from two separate time periods, an exported CSV doesn't include the % Change (booo!), and there's no option to sort by % Change within the GA report, essentially forcing you to scroll through all the results to pinpoint the major movers and shakers. I'm not averse to using spreadsheets to sort this data, but I'm thinking that I'd likely need a macro to make this work, something like this. However, none of the macros on that page are working (possibly because they were designed for a previous version of Analytics). All suggestions are appreciated. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dangaul0 -
AW Stats vs Google Analytics
Hey Moz Community, I am looking to get opinions on the best practice for analytics/traffic analysis. From experience I know that AW Stats reads high and Google Analytics reads low for traffic for reason in this article http://www.smartz.com/blog/2009/01/23/analytic-confusion-%E2%80%93-awstats-vs-google-analytics/ It drives me a little nuts how far off both are for some pages. I have one article that shows 100 views (GA) and AW stats shows 5 times that number of views. Any suggestions or systems you recommend? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | johnshearer0 -
Google Analytics: how many visits from country Google domains?
Hello, I manage a site with visitors from many different countries. With Google Analytics, it is normal to see the number of visitors from each search engine. However, I would like to identify the number of visitors from each Google-search contry domain. How many visitors from Google.com? How many from Google.co.uk. And from Google.co.zm? And so on. Anybody knows if this is possible and if yes, how can it be done? Thank you in advance, Dario
Reporting & Analytics | | Darioz0