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
-
Redirect for Soft 404 or 404?
I have a client site that displays properties from the MLS. Once these properties sell they're removed from the MLS and they stop showing up on her site. This would result in a 404 error, but right now any property that's not being found is being 301 redirected back to the property page. I see how this makes sense for a user, but Google is saying there's an increase in Soft 404 errors and I've read that this could negatively affect organic traffic. Should I keep the redirect for removed properties or should I have it serve a 404 with a message that the house you're looking for may have sold and link to the property page? Is it better to have Soft 404 errors or 404 errors?
Technical SEO | | JaredDetroit0 -
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?
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
How can I fix this home page crawl error ?
My website shows this crawl error => 612 : Home page banned by error response for robots.txt. I also did not get any page data in my account for this website ... I did get keyword rankings and traffic data, I am guessing from the analytics account. url = www.mississaugakids.com Not sure really what to do with this ! Any help is greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | jlane90 -
Pages appear fine in browser but 404 error when crawled?
I am working on an eCommerce website that has been written in WordPress with the shop pages in E commerce Plus PHP v6.2.7. All the shop product pages appear to work fine in a browser but 404 errors are returned when the pages are crawled. WMT also returns a 404 error when ‘fetch as Google’ is used. Here is a typical page: http://www.flyingjacket.com/proddetail.php?prod=Hepburn-Jacket Why is this page returning a 404 error when crawled? Please help?
Technical SEO | | Web-Incite0 -
Duplicate title/content errors for blog archives
Hi All Would love some help, fairly new at SEO and using SEOMoz, I've looked through the forums and have just managed to confuse myself. I have a customer with a lot of duplicate page title/content errors in SEOMoz. It's an umbraco CMS and a lot of the errors appear to be blog archives and pagination. i.e. http://example.com/blog http://example.com/blog/ http://example.com/blog/?page=1 http://example.com/blog/?page=2 and then also http://example.com/blog/2011/08 http://example.com/blog/2011/08?page=1 http://example.com/blog/2011/08?page=2 http://example.com/blog/2011/08?page=3 (empty page) http://example.com/blog/2011/08?page=4 (empty page) This continues for different years and months and blog entries and creates hundreds of errors. What's the best way to handle this for the SEOMoz report and the search engines. Should I rel=canonical the /blog page? I think this would probably affect the SEO of all the blog entries? Use robots.txt? Sitemaps? URL parameters in the search engines? Appreciate any assistance/recommendations Thanks in advance Ian
Technical SEO | | iragless0 -
Error in webmaster tools
Hi, I just got an error (12 pages especifically) from webmaster tools when consulting "indexing problems" Something like: The URL doesn't exist, but the server doesn't return a 404 error. What should I do? Many Thanks.
Technical SEO | | juanmiguelcr0 -
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 -
Fixing Crawl Errors
Hi! I moved my Wordpress blog back in August, and lost much of my site traffic. I recently found over 1000 crawl errors in Webmaster Tools because some of my redirects weren't transferred, so we are working on fixing the errors and letting Google know. I'm wondering how long I should expect for Google to recognize that the errors have been fixed and for the traffic to start returning? Thanks! Jodi - momsfavoritestuff.com
Technical SEO | | JodiFTM0