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
-
Whatstuffwherebot user agent messing up Google Analytics
Starting yesterday, Aug 26, 2020, I noticed a new bot crawling our site with user agent whatstuffwherebot. Google Analytics is counting these hits as human traffic, completely throwing off my numbers - yesterday, Analytics reported nearly triple my typical number of visitors. As of now, Search Console only shows data through Aug 25 so I don't know if Search Console is also affected. Is anybody else seeing something similar? Does anybody know what the whatstuffwherebot bot is? I don't get any results when I search on Google or Bing. For what it's worth, the traffic is coming from Columbus, OH, running over Amazon AWS via 278 different IP addresses so far. Also, WordFence (my WordPress security plugin) correctly identifies these hits as bot traffic.
Reporting & Analytics | | ahirai0 -
Referral Traffic from Google
Hello, I have a question about my company's new website. I've worked in SEO and studied Google Analytics results for a few years now but have never really come across something like this. I started in this position in January of this year and when I started breaking down the traffic sources in Google Analytics, I noticed most of the traffic was coming from Google.com as a referral source. I had never seen Google.com as a referral source before so I looked into options for what it could be. It was not a paid ad and our organic traffic was coming through in Analytics, Before I could get any further, our new website was launched (we switched CRM's to WordPress) and the referral traffic from google went from 2,966 in January of 2015 to 22 in February 2015. for more comparison, in February of 2014, the referral traffic from Google was 2,496. I expected a drop when we switched CRM's but we correctly re-directed all pages and created a new sitemap and our organic traffic is up since the switch (not enough to cover drop in referral). I thought at first this had to do with our Google sellers account being de-activated when we made the switch, but I quickly fixed this over a month ago and no change. I'm wondering if anyone has ever seen Google.com come through as a referral source in Google Analytics and if they we're able to figure out what it actually was. This would be a great help! Thank you, Alex
Reporting & Analytics | | RASEO1 -
How does switching to HTTPS effect Google Analytics?
We are looking at making our site HTTPS. We have been using the same Google Analytics account for years and I like having the historical data. All of our pages will be the same, we are just going to redirect from the http to https. Does anything need to be done with Google Analytics? What about other addons such as Optimizely, Crazy Egg, or Share this?
Reporting & Analytics | | EcommerceSite0 -
Google Ad referral
I was wondering if someone could decode the jumble of a referral - this is supposedly the referal that led to a click through to my site via a product listing ad. I am trying to figure out how www.nextag.com comes in to the picture as we do not have refurbexperts even listed there? Thanks to anyone who tries/does work it out. http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=CGXud6DmDU_qeL5THygHpuICwCaTZwMYD_Nvvv0bEwMS50wEIBhAEIOn5-gEoBVCl7P7f-v____8BYMnu8omYpPQSoAHAhIv9A8gBB8gDG6oEJ0_QwcNc5zNun_d7S5KNcMT6uPjjH_mMDkKFFgBCQ6aKICRPJVVa7MAFBYgGAaAGJoAHqPv0ApAHAeASupqdo-ypit0m&ohost=www.google.com&cid=5GhZEzUCSC6x9n2wxOdz3-mrAfSUkvHKPN3wD5yLInnlNil_&sig=AOD64_1D1z1JPYbFP0UnUglJVOfvd25RfA&adurl=http://refurbexperts.com/product/527/HP-LaserJet-P2015-Laser-Printer-RECONDITIONED%3Futm_source%3Dproductlistingads%26utm_medium%3Dadwords%26utm_campaign%3Dadwords&ctype=5&nb=0&res_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nextag.com%2Fhp-p2015-laserjet%2Fproducts-html%3Fnxtg%3D116d0a1c0504-9FFEB16DE52A7E2A&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nextag.com%2Fgoto.jsp%3Fp%3D3652%26search%3Dhp%2520p2015%2520laserjet%26t%3Dag%253D1384181795%26crid%3D48271786%26gg_aid%3D20169721025%26gg_site%3D%26gclid%3DCjgKEAjwzIucBRDzjIz9qMOB3TASJABBIwL1LHK7GcAPS6yHGpd9Kq3wsZrcPORAWD8QCWivr4W75PD_BwE&nm=11&nx=43&ny=12&is=700x181&clkt=187
Reporting & Analytics | | henya0 -
Google Analytics - Next Page Path is the Same URL?
Hey Everyone, I have a Google analytics question. I'm looking through a client's site and when I look at the next page path, I get the same URL as the next path. For example, on the homepage, the next page path I get is the homepage again? This happens for all URL's, is this an implementation error? Is there a way to fix this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | EvansHunt0 -
Google as referring domain
Hi all, a colleague asked a question, which I could not answer (never even noticed this "problem") 😞 When we are logged into our GA account and go the referring domains section, we find Google. I always thought that these visitors came via Google Image Search, but not all of them do. Most of them come via "/imgres", but some come via "/" (always thought that "/" was the homepage?), "/url" and "//" Maybe I am just stupid, but honestly I could not explain what these strings mean... or how these visitors landed on our site... Can you help me???
Reporting & Analytics | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Localhost:4444 Showing Up in Google Analytics
Hello All, Lately in my Google Analytics account I have noticed a referral source labelled: localhost:4444 The number of visits is really high from this source, but I have no idea (no clue!) what it actually means. Can anyone shed some light on what this is about? Should I be creating some sort of filter to screen out this as a referral source (assuming it is not legitimate)? Many thanks in advance. Cheers!
Reporting & Analytics | | Robert-B0 -
Easiest way to get out of Google local results?
Odd one this, but what's the easiest way to remove a website from the Google local listings? Would removing all the Google map listings do the job? A client of ours is suffering massively since the Google update in the middle of last month. Previously they would appear no1 or no2 in the local results and normally 1 or 2 in the organic results. However, since the middle of last month any time they rank on the first page for a local result, their organic result has dropped massively to at least page 4. If I set my location as something different in google, say 100 miles away, they then rank well for the organic listings (obviously not appearing for local searches). When I change it back to my current location the organic listing is gone and they are back to ranking for the local. Since the middle of July the traffic from search engines has dropped about 65%. All the organic rankings remain as strong as ever just not in the areas where they want to get customers from!! The idea is to remove the local listing and get the organics reranking as the ctr on those is much much higher. On a side note, anyone else notice very poor ctr on google local listings? Maybe users feel they are adverts thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ccgale0