Webmaster tools crawl errors

[Or.Shvartz]

Hi there,

iv been tracking my webmaster tools crawl errors for a while now(6 months) and im noticing some pages that are far gone 404 are still poping out on the crawl errors. - that pages have no data for xml linking, and remote linking are from pages that are far gone 404 also.

that pages have 404 error page + redirect to homepage, and google still notice them with old cache content.

does someone have a clue why is this happening?

[Or.Shvartz]

Thank you very much Dana for the superb answer!

any clue for how much this errors are critical for my website seo? (is this problem worth fixing)

[AndersS]

Hi!

Have you verified that there is a proper 301 redirect from the old URL's? If, for example, there is a 302 instead, I wouldn't be surprised if Google kept the old info in the index, as you have sort of said "I'll be back soon at this old address, just wait a minute (or year)".

Do you have an example URL for us that we could take a look at?

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Dana,

If your looking for someone to confirm what Dana said she is 100% right.

If your using a data base like WordPress it is posable for it to hold old pages and serve them. Make sure your host knows of your problem if you are using a CMS.

Hope this helps,

Thomas

[danatanseo]

Yes, I understand this issue very well and have seen it many times. Most often, it is happening because another of your pages that is being indexed is still referencing those pages. Please forgive Google, it is but a humble, not-so-intelligent bot (despite what the world would have you think). If you keep referencing a page that doesn't exist, Googlebot will say to itself "but it does exist! it does!" and keep indexing it, despite the 404 error. I mean, for all Google knows, it is your intention to bring that page back and maybe you just screwed up and it is 404-ing, you know?

Here's the remedy:

Do a content audit. Here's a great post on how to do that: http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/how-to-perform-a-content-audit/ 

You will discover many things, without a doubt, including pages that are linking to these 404 pages. Decide what to do with those pages, i.e. nix them, re-build them, whatever. If you have pages in Google that you really do want out of the index and those same pages are 404-ing....simply go to your Google Webmaster Tools Account and in the left nav select  "Google Index" and then "Remove URLs." Then simply click the box that says "create a new removal request" and enter the desired URL into that Box. Provided your page meets the requirements (and if  it's producing a 404 error it does) Google will prioritize its removal. Under no circumstances should this be confused with the disavow tool. Just to make that clear.

I hope this helps. Any questions and I'm happy to help further if I can.