404 Error on Spider Emulators
-
I recently began working at a company called Uncommon Goods. I ran a few different spider emulators on our homepage (uncommongoods.com) and I saw a 404 Error on SEO-browser.com as well as URL errors on Summit Media's emulator and SEOMoz's crawler. It seems there is a serious problem here. How is this affecting our site from an SEO standpoint? What are the repercussions?
Also, I know we have a lot of javascript on our homepage..is this causing the 404? Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
-Zack
-
Hey Zack,
It seems your website is now returning a 200 so you apparently managed to fix the problem.
Was the problem coming from the server configuration as I suggested?
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer. -
Hi Zack,
Yes, having the home page return a 404 error is a HUGE problem. It actually tells the engines that the page doesn't exist so they will stop crawling it and eventualy drop it from their index even if it returns content.
You should solve this problem ASAP!
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer. -
Hi Guillaume,
Your comments about Javascript on the client side make complete sense to me now and I will examine our Resin config w/ my IT team. Thanks for explaining. Also, as per Beneeb's advice above, I'm going to try making some changes to robots.txt.
From a bigger picture perspective though, do you think this 404 Error is even that big of a deal? Are we likely to be penalized for this in terms of Page Rank, Domain Authority, etc..??
Thanks for your help!
-Zack
-
Hi Zack,
The 404 error has nothing to do with the robots.txt file, it has to do with your server configuration as I said in my answers bellow.
About the robots.txt file, I would remove the Disallow: line if you don't need to block anything.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer. -
Hi Beneeb,
That tool is awesome! It definitely helps, thanks! I'm going to show that report to my IT guys today. I think your guess is a very good one. Hopefully I can persuade them to make the changes and we'll see if it resolves the error.
Best Regards,
-Zack
-
Hi Zack,
To be honest with you, it was just a guess. I used a robots.txt syntax checker and saw several issues. You can check out that same tool here & run your current robots.txt file through it:
http://tool.motoricerca.info/robots-checker.phtml
I hope that gets you pushed in the right direction. I'm very new to SEO, but I've worked in the technical support world forever. So, my suggestion is only worth what you paid for it.
-
Hi Beeneeb,
Thank you for your insight. I think this makes sense as I see there is some redundancy in robots.txt as it is now. I'm curious however, why do you think that changing robots.txt will resolve the 404 error?
Best Regards,
-Zack
-
Hi Zack,
Quick followup : Your website will always return 500 to HTTP/1.0 queries. With HTTP/1.1, homepage returns 404 and subpages returns 200.
I saw the website was running on a Resin server rather than a Apache server, then, you might want to look into your Resin server's configuration.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer. -
Hi Zack,
Actually, when I use this http header tool and that I input http://www.uncommongoods.com/ I see that the header returned is in fact a 500 Internal Server Error.
The HTTP Header is returned by the server even before the browser can kow that their is javascript on that page so it has nothing to do with javascript.
You'll have to look at the server side as an Internal Server Error and the HTTP Header are returned by the server in opposite to the javascript that is executed client send.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer. -
Hi Zack,
Looking at your robots.txt file, you have several errors. I would replace your current robots.txt file with the following:
User-Agent: *
Disallow:Sitemap: http://www.uncommongoods.com/sitemap.xml
(not sure why the message truncated your sitemap file, but you get the picture)
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
-
Unsolved Google Search Console Still Reporting Errors After Fixes
Hello, I'm working on a website that was too bloated with content. We deleted many pages and set up redirects to newer pages. We also resolved an unreasonable amount of 400 errors on the site. I also removed several ancient sitemaps that listed content deleted years ago that Google was crawling. According to Moz and Screaming Frog, these errors have been resolved. We've submitted the fixes for validation in GSC, but the validation repeatedly fails. What could be going on here? How can we resolve these error in GSC.
Technical SEO | | tif-swedensky0 -
Fake 404 Issue
Hello, I just had a problem my site started showing up 404 issues for all my wordpress pages and post but visually the page was loading with content but yet all pages and software including google WMT was showing the 404 issue. I never found the issue but was able to move the site into a new hosting and restore from a backup and it work. Google found the issue on Jan 27th and they remove all the pages with 404 from the index and I lost most of my top ranking I have since fix the issue and was wondering if google would restore my ranking in such a case? Regards, M
Technical SEO | | thewebguy30 -
.htaccess probelem causing 605 Error?
I'm working on a site, it's just a few html pages and I've added a WP blog. I've just noticed that moz is giving me the following error with reference to http://website.com: (webmaster tools is set to show the www subdomain, so it appears OK). Error Code 605: Page Banned by robots.txt, X-Robots-Tag HTTP Header, or Meta Robots Tag Here's the code from my htaccess, is this causing the problem? RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | Stevie-G
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://www.website.com/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php
RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ http://www.website.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^website.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.website.com/$1 [R=301,L] BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Thanks for any advice you can offer!0 -
What's Worse - 404 errors or a huge .htaccess file
We have changed our site architecture pretty significantly and now have many fewer pages (albeit with more robust content and focused linking). My question is, what should I do about all the 404 errors (keep in mind, I am only finding these in Bing Webmaster tools, not Moz or GWT)? Is it worse to have all those 404 errors (hundreds), or to have a massive htaccess file for pages that are only getting hits by the Bing crawlbot. Any insight would be great. Thanks
Technical SEO | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Getting Errors On Server Connectivity-??
Hi Guys I am getting a massive crawl errors on googlewebmaster ,stating there is over 2162 errors connect time out - anyone know where I can see exactly where the time out is from? I have browsed through my site and I do not see any connect timeout occured. Thanks Cary
Technical SEO | | ilovebodykits1 -
Importance of correction of technical errors
Hello everyone!!! I have question that i know it has been asked so many times. However i am looking for an idea for my specific situation. I own a website about commercial steel. My main focus has been getting incoming links from important companies and sites, while maintaining a good quality site. Ive been struggling with ranks and Page Authority. Ive never put attention to technical errors such as Duplicate Content, 4XX Errors and critical warnings such as Redirects. I have around 70 errors and around 400 warnings. Someone told me that as long as the website is "user friendly" i should worry about that. I have scarce resources to my SEO efforts. Which aspect should i put more effort?. Link Building and Quality Content vs Technical SEO ??? Is there a recommended balance mix towards a better PA, DA and Overall Quality?? I know is difficult, but it would be extremely helpful to hear from you!! Regards.
Technical SEO | | JesusD0 -
Wordpress Website + 404 Errors
Hi everyone, I like to do a bit of auditing for our clients using SEOMoz. Once client that's using a Wordpress website had reported over a couple hundred 404 errors. However, when checking out the links, all the webpages (that I've tested) loaded just fine. Does anyone know why this would be the case? I thought, perhaps, the website might have gone down when it was crawling, but I have no evidence to back this up.
Technical SEO | | ThinkShiftInc0 -
404 vs. 200?
Is it better to have an error page return a 404 or 200? If I change it to 200, will I still be able to see reports of 404's and/ or broken links? Is there a valid SEO reason that Google would have for not wanting error pages to return 200? In other words, is there any SEO reason to absolutely change it to return a 404? I would rather let it return 200 if no priority reason to change. [title edited by staff to provide clarity]
Technical SEO | | cindyt-170380