Google Webmaster Tools Sitemap errors for phantom urls?
-
Two weeks ago we changed our urls so the correct addresses are all lowercase. Everything else 301 redirects to those. We have submitted and made sure that Google has downloaded our updated sitemap several times since.
Even so, Webmaster Tools is reporting 33000 + errors in our sitemap for urls that are no longer in our sitemap and haven't been for weeks. It claims to have found the errors within the last couple of days but the sitemap has been updated for a couple of weeks and has been downloaded by Google at least three times since.
Here is our sitemap: http://www.aquinasandmore.com/urllist.xml
Here are a couple of urls that Webmaster Tools says are in the sitemap:
http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-gifts/Caroline-Gerhardinger-Large-Sterling-Silver-Medal/sku/78664
Redirect errorunavailable
Oct 7, 2011
http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-gifts/Catherine-of-Bologna-Small-Gold-Filled-Medal/sku/78706
Redirect errorunavailable
Oct 7, 2011 -
How long does the actual data usually take to catch up with what WMT says is current?
I have not experienced any delay before. There should only be one sitemap record for your site at any time. That record could be composed of multiple files, but it is one collection of records.
When Google identifies crawl errors, those errors should be generated from the sitemap on file at the time of the error. There is a view sitemap option in Google WMT you can use to see the sitemap they have on file. This step would be next. If you can confirm the bad URL does not appear in the sitemap, I would then wait to see if the issue re-appears after today, October 11th.
I know this is frustrating but the system is very straight forward. I cannot explain why a URL not included in your sitemap would appear on your sitemap crawl errors tab. The only two possibilities I can come with is either you have made an error when sharing some information, or there is an unusual glitch on Google's end.
With all the above noted, working with sitemaps is not a good investment of your time. If your site navigation is properly designed, your sitemap offers no benefit whatsoever.
-
"then these links should not appear going forward." - They are showing up now even though Google says they have our latest sitemap and that the errors were found yesterday. How long does the actual data usually take to catch up with what WMT says is current?
The image urls are built from the actual title on the fly and don't 301 so those aren't a problem. The other one you mentioned does need to be cleaned up in the site map. Thanks for catching that.
These errors are showing up when I go to the crawl errors section and click the sitemap tab. Yes, the sitemap I shared is the same one in WMT.
-
I was unable to locate the URLs listed in your sitemap. If you Google WMT tools settings are correct and the sitemap which you have shared is the same one listed in your Google WMT account, then these links should not appear going forward.
You would need to examine your Google WMT account closely to determine the exact source of these errors.
Where exactly within your Google WMT are you seeing these errors? How are you identifying the source of these URLs are being from your sitemap?
Two weeks ago we changed our urls so the correct addresses are all lowercase.
There are many URLs in your site map which are not lower case. An example:
http://www.aquinasandmore.com/title/Brian-Kolodiejchuk/FuseAction/store.AuthorSearch/Author/2337/
Also you share a lot of image URLs which are not lower case either.
I would not necessarily advise cleaning up the entire site, but at least establish the best practice going forward.
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
-
Alternate page with proper canonical tag Status: Excluded in Google webmaster tools.
In Google Webmaster Tools, I have a coverage issue. I am getting this error message: Alternate page with proper canonical tag Status: Excluded. It gives the below blog post page as an example. Any idea how to resolve? At one time, I was using handl utm grabber, but the plugin is deactivated on my website. https://www.savacations.com/turrialba-costa-ricas-garden-city/?utm_source=deleted&utm_medium=deleted&utm_term=deleted&utm_content=deleted&utm_campaign=deleted&gclid=deleted5.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alancito0 -
All urls seem to exist (no 404 errors) but they don't.
Hello I am doing a SEO auditing for a website which only has a few pages. I have no cPanel credentials, no FTP no Wordpress admin account, just watching it from the outside. The site works, the Moz crawler didn't report any problem, I can reach every page from the menu. The problem is that - except for the few actual pages - no matter what you type after the domain name, you always reach the home page and don't get any 404 error. I.E. Http://domain.com/oiuxyxyzbpoyob/ (there is no such a page, but i don't get 404 error, the home is displayed and the url in the browser remains Http://domain.com/oiubpoyob/, so it's not a 301 redirect). Http://domain.com/WhatEverYouType/ (same) Could this be an important SEO issue (i.e. resulting in infinite amount of duplicate content pages )? Do you think I should require the owner to prevent this from happening? Should I look into the .htaccess file to fix it ? Thank you Mozers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoMiSoL0 -
Client wants to remove mobile URLs from their sitemap to avoid indexing issues. However this will require SEVERAL billing hours. Is having both mobile/desktop URLs in a sitemap really that detrimental to search indexing?
We had an enterprise client ask to remove mobile URLs from their sitemaps. For their website both desktop & mobile URLs are combined into one sitemap. Their website has a mobile template (not a responsive website) and is configured properly via Google's "separate URL" guidelines. Our client is referencing a statement made from John Mueller that having both mobile & desktop sitemaps can be problematic for indexing. Here is the article https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mobile-sitemaps-20137.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
We would be happy to remove the mobile URLs from their sitemap. However this will unfortunately take several billing hours for our development team to implement and QA. This will end up costing our client a great deal of money when the task is completed. Is it worth it to remove the mobile URLs from their main website to be in adherence to John Mueller's advice? We don't believe these extra mobile URLs are harming their search indexing. However we can't find any sources to explain otherwise. Any advice would be appreciated. Thx.0 -
404 Errors
Do 404 Errors really have a lot of impact on rankings and over all authority of the site with google? Say you have a site that all the pages have moved apart from the home page which is exactly the same before moving? So most of your pages are showing 404 errros.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | summer3000 -
Limit on Google Removal Tool?
I'm dealing with thousands of duplicate URL's caused by the CMS... So I am using some automation to get through them - What is the daily limit? weekly? monthly? Any ideas?? thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Why is Google Webmaster Tools reporting a massive increase in 404s?
Several weeks back, we launched a new website, replacing a legacy system moving it to a new server. With the site transition, webroke some of the old URLs, but it didn't seem to be too much concern. We blocked ones I knew should be blocked in robots.txt, 301 redirected as much duplicate data and used canonical tags as far as I could (which is still an ongoing process), and simply returned 404 for any others that should have never really been there. For the last months, I've been monitoring the 404s Google reports in Web Master Tootls (WMT) and while we had a few hundred due to the gradual removal duplicate data, I wasn't too concerned. I've been generating updated sitemaps for Google multiple times a week with any updated URLs. Then WMT started to report a massive increase in 404s, somewhere around 25,000 404s per day (making it impossible for me to keep up). The sitemap.xml has new URL only but it seems that Google still uses the old sitemap from before the launch. The reported sources of 404s (in WMT) don't exist anylonger. They all are coming from the old site. I attached a screenshot showing the drastic increase in 404s. What could possibly cause this problem? wmt-massive-404s.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sonetseo0 -
Somthing weird in my Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors...
Hey, I recently (this past may) redesigned my e-commerce site from .asp to .php. I am trying to fix all the old pages with 301 redirects that didn't make it in the switch, but I keep getting weird pages coming up in GWT. I have about 400 pages under crawl errors that look like this "emailus.php?id=MD908070" I delete them and they come back. my site is http://www.moondoggieinc.com the id #'s are product #'s for products that are no longer on the site, but the site is .php now. They also do not show a sitemap they are linked in or any other page that they are linked from. Are these hurting me? and how do I get rid of them? Thanks! KristyO
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KristyO0 -
Google bot vs google mobile bot
Hi everyone 🙂 I seriously hope you can come up with an idea to a solution for the problem below, cause I am kinda stuck 😕 Situation: A client of mine has a webshop located on a hosted server. The shop is made in a closed CMS, meaning that I have very limited options for changing the code. Limited access to pagehead and can within the CMS only use JavaScript and HTML. The only place I have access to a server-side language is in the root where a Defualt.asp file redirects the visitor to a specific folder where the webshop is located. The webshop have 2 "languages"/store views. One for normal browsers and google-bot and one for mobile browsers and google-mobile-bot.In the default.asp (asp classic). I do a test for user agent and redirect the user to one domain or the mobile, sub-domain. All good right? unfortunately not. Now we arrive at the core of the problem. Since the mobile shop was added on a later date, Google already had most of the pages from the shop in it's index. and apparently uses them as entrance pages to crawl the site with the mobile bot. Hence it never sees the default.asp (or outright ignores it).. and this causes as you might have guessed a huge pile of "Dub-content" Normally you would just place some user-agent detection in the page head and either throw Google a 301 or a rel-canon. But since I only have access to JavaScript and html in the page head, this cannot be done. I'm kinda running out of options quickly, so if anyone has an idea as to how the BEEP! I get Google to index the right domains for the right devices, please feel free to comment. 🙂 Any and all ideas are more then welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReneReinholdt0