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.
Why is Google Webmaster Tools showing 404 Page Not Found Errors for web pages that don't have anything to do with my site?
-
I am currently working on a small site with approx 50 web pages. In the crawl error section in WMT Google has highlighted over 10,000 page not found errors for pages that have nothing to do with my site. Anyone come across this before?
-
These extensions look like they are attachments. Go into GWT, click on the 404 link, then a box with pop up, click on the "Linked From" tab.. Go to the page and Ctrl U to see the source code. Do a CTRL F and search for the broken link. When you find it in your source code you should be able to figure out what's triggering that response. If you can't find the URLs in your source code, mark them as fixed and it should take care of the problem. Especially if they are older. It looks like it could be a shipment status, a product out of stock message, and a PDF of train schedules.
I would check the linked from pages and make sure that there isn't some erroneous code that is creating a page when it doesn't need to.
-
I think you could have is the following problem:
You got a Domain wich earned Links bevore and these Links are still out there. Google can see them and you will again and again see them in WMT.
You cant just say solved and than they are gone, caused by the backlinks. They come again.
Check that in WMT - I dont know how it is called in english versions (I just see the german), you can click on the 404 and than take a look at "what is linking to that page"
An easy solution in that case may be to disallow "/fs" for bots. (if you dont use fs in your url structure) -
The 404s start with the correct url for the site but are then suffixed after the forward slash with urls such as;
fs/201410/a_Royal_Mail_Item_Is_Currently_Being_Processed_For_Delivery_.html
/fs/201410/a_When_will_John_lewis_restock_the_Dr_Dre_beats_solo_hd_.html
fs/201410/a_Food_stalls_at_train_stations_in_London_.html
There are 10,000+ of these in my WMT account. I have never seen this before - any ideas?
-
Need more data to help, eh!
-
What do you mean "pages that have nothing to do with my site" are these not on your domain or are they on your domain but you are not familiar with them?
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
-
Why can't google mobile friendly test access my website?
getting the following error when trying to use google mobile friendly tool: "page cannot be reached. This could be because the page is unavailable or blocked by robots.txt" I don't have anything blocked by robots.txt or robots tag. i also manage to render my pages on google search console's fetch and render....so what can be the reason that the tool can't access my website? Also...the mobile usability report on the search console works but reports very little, and the google speed test also doesnt work... Any ideas to what is the reason and how to fix this? LEARN MOREDetailsUser agentGooglebot smartphone
Technical SEO | | Nadav_W0 -
Why Can't Googlebot Fetch Its Own Map on Our Site?
I created a custom map using google maps creator and I embedded it on our site. However, when I ran the fetch and render through Search Console, it said it was blocked by our robots.txt file. I read in the Search Console Help section that: 'For resources blocked by robots.txt files that you don't own, reach out to the resource site owners and ask them to unblock those resources to Googlebot." I did not setup our robtos.txt file. However, I can't imagine it would be setup to block google from crawling a map. i will look into that, but before I go messing with it (since I'm not familiar with it) does google automatically block their maps from their own googlebot? Has anyone encountered this before? Here is what the robot.txt file says in Search Console: User-agent: * Allow: /maps/api/js? Allow: /maps/api/js/DirectionsService.Route Allow: /maps/api/js/DistanceMatrixService.GetDistanceMatrix Allow: /maps/api/js/ElevationService.GetElevationForLine Allow: /maps/api/js/GeocodeService.Search Allow: /maps/api/js/KmlOverlayService.GetFeature Allow: /maps/api/js/KmlOverlayService.GetOverlays Allow: /maps/api/js/LayersService.GetFeature Disallow: / Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Ruben
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
How to inform Google to remove 404 Pages of my website?
Hi, I want to remove more than 6,000 pages of my website because of bad keywords, I am going to drop all these pages and making them ‘404’ I want to know how can I inform google that these pages does not exists so please don’t send me traffic from those bad keywords? Also want to know can I use disavow tool of google website to exclude these 6,000 pages of my own website?
Technical SEO | | renukishor4 -
We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?
We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Google Cache is not showing in my page
Hello Everyone, I have issue in my Page, My category page (http://www.bannerbuzz.com/custom-vinyl-banners.html) is regular cached in past, but before sometime it can't show the cached result in SERP and not show in cached result , I have also fetch this link in google web master, but can't get the result, it is showing following message. 404. That’s an error. The requested URL /search?q=cache%3A http%3A//www.bannerbuzz.com/custom-vinyl-banners.html was not found on this server. That’s all we know. My category page rank is 2 and its keyword is on first in google.com, so i am little bit worried about this page cache issue, Can someone please tell me why is this happening? Is this a temporary issue? Help me to solve out this cache issue and once again my page will regularly cache in future. Thanks
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Does Google pass link juice a page receives if the URL parameter specifies content and has the Crawl setting in Webmaster Tools set to NO?
The page in question receives a lot of quality traffic but is only relevant to a small percent of my users. I want to keep the link juice received from this page but I do not want it to appear in the SERPs.
Technical SEO | | surveygizmo0 -
Is there a great tool for URL mapping old to new web site?
We are implementing new design and removing some pages and adding new content. Task is to correctly map and redirect old pages that no longer exist.
Technical SEO | | KnutDSvendsen0
