404s in GWT - Not sure how they are being found
-
We have been getting multiple 404 errors in GWT that look like this: http://www.example.com/UpdateCart.
The problem is that this is not a URL that is part of our structure, it is only a piece. The actual URL has a query string on the end, so if you take the query string off, the page does not work.
I can't figure out how Google is finding these pages. Could it be removing the query string?
Thanks.
-
Kelli - the first thing I thought was what garfield_disliker asks: have you set up Google Webmaster Tools to ignore these parameters that are important for the cart page to load?
That said, Google Webmaster Tools is run by a team that's separate from the primary search team, so it's possible that GWT is flagging an issue that isn't an actual issue for Google. Run a search in Google for "site:yourdomain.com/UpdateCart" and see what URLs Google has indexed. If they have that 404ing URL, that's not good. If they have correct URLs, it's possible that this is a Google Webmaster Tools thing.
-
Hi,
Are you using the /updateCart url in goal tracking or pushing events to analytics using this url? I have seen GWT pick up 404's from us pushing virtual (non existing) page views to analytics for goal tracking etc. Just a thought.
-
First, you can never be sure there are no external links. Open Site Explorer's index (and any other link analysis tool) is not a full picture, and Google doesn't always provide all the inbound links to your site. The junkier the scraper, the less likely you will see the link.
Secondly, could you provide a concrete example of this?
Where is the page (with parameters) linked from/to on your site? How is your site appending those parameters to the URL? Does it send users through a redirect to get to that URL? It might be useful to run your own crawl (w/ Screaming Frog or any other crawling software) of the site and take a look at all the internal links and the response codes.
Also have you set up Google WMT to ignore any parameters?
It's certainly possible that Google's crawlers are stripping parameters on their own.
-
We do not dynamically inject canonicals into the page. They are also not old URLs because they have never been valid URLs.
They are all linked from internal pages, but when I look at those pages, the URL with the query string is the only URL that is being pointed to, not the partial URL. There are no external links.
Thanks,
Kelli -
In WMT click on the URL that is 404'd and then select "linked to from". It will show you where Google is picking up the 404 error.
Are these 404 pages being linked to from an external site? Sometimes the 404s that appear in WMT are from links pointing to your domain from an external site, often one that has scraped your site.
-
Does your website dynamically inject canonical links into the page? Some content management systems will automatically generate canonicals that strip parameters from the URL. If that's the case then that might be why you wouldn't see it in your ordinary site structure.
It's also possible that it's an old URL that Google indexed which is no longer on your site or something that is linked externally somewhere, so the crawlers are finding it somewhere off site.
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
-
How can I make sure a desktoppage is shown in the (desktop) search results instead of the mobile page?
When I search for my brandname, the mobile version of the customer support page is shown in the (desktop) results. We use a m.example.nl mobile webpage. To try to solve the problem, we’ve adjusted the following: Made sure the homepage is marked according to schema.org Homepage expanded with textual content and headings containing our brandname Removed all the textual content from the mobile customer support page Added the mobile customer support page to the mobile sitemap What can we change more in settings/marking/sitemap, to make sure our desktop homepage is shown in the brandname results?
Technical SEO | | WillieBV0 -
Gradual Drop in GWT Indexed Pages for large website
Hey all, I am working on SEO for a massive sports website. The information provided will be limited but I will give you as much context as possible. I just started digging into it and have found several on-page SEO issues of which I will fix when I get to the meat of it but this seems like something else could be going on. I have attached an image below. It doesn't seem like it's a GWT bug as reported at one point either as it's been gradually dropping over the past year. Also, there is about a 20% drop in traffic in Google Analytics over this time as well. This website has hundreds of thousands of pages of player profiles, sports team information and more all marked up with JSON-LD. Some of the on-page stuff that needs to be fixed are the h1 and h2, title tags and meta description. Also, some of the descriptions are pulled from wikipedia and linked to a "view more" area. Anchor text has "sign up" language as well. Not looking for a magic bullet but to be pointed in the right direction. Where should I start checking off to ensure I cover my bases besides the on page stuff above? There aren't any serious errors and I don't see any manual penalties. There are 4,300 404's but I have seen plenty of sites with that many 404's all of which still got traffic. It doesn't look like a sitemap was submitted to GWT and when I try submitting sitemap.xml, I get a 504 error (network unreachable). Thanks for reading. I am just getting started on this project but would like to spend as much time sharpening the axe before getting to work. lJWk8Rh
Technical SEO | | ArashG0 -
302 redirected links not found
There are so many 302 redirected links you found among which most are for the pages which needs users to login to view the pages so redirection to login page is unavoidable. For example: https://www.stopwobble.com/wishlist/index/add/product/98199/form_key/QE0kEzOF2yO3DTtt/ Also we don't have product compare functionlity, but still there are so many links from compare page which redirects to respective category page. For exammple: http://www.stopwobble.com/catalog/product_compare/add/product/98199/uenc/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5zdG9wd29iYmxlLmNvbS93b2JibGUtd2VkZ2Vz/form_key/QE0kEzOF2yO3DTtt/ We need to know from where Moz crawler is detecting these links so that we can supress them from being crawled. I already tries to review overall site and confirmed these links nowhere exists in page source or in sitemap.xml
Technical SEO | | torbett0 -
Huge uptick in 404s on new website
I just launched a new website, and I see that the 404s shot up hugely in Google Webmaster Tools right during the launch. We went from Drupal to WordPress, but I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on whether these 404s represent a crisis, or potentially something harmless? There has been no noticeable SEO downtick in terms of keywords or queries during the same period... Thanks for any thoughts. Screenshot-2015-05-19-13.58.55.png
Technical SEO | | yoursearchteam0 -
Not sure which way to go or what to do?
Hi there, I have been a pro member of SEOmoz for a while now but this is my question in the forum and although I have looked through so much helpful information I was wondering if someone could give me some further advice and guidance? I have a 3 year old ecommerce website personalisedmugs.co.uk which until May 2012 had some excellent growth, we then lost around 50% of traffic due to reduced organic rankings in google. We then noticed a further drop again in September. From researching information I believe this drop was from the penguin update and EMD update? Since these updates we have: *Stopped working with a company in India whom was looking after SEO for us for 18 months redeveloped/designed website and upgraded software version constantly refreshed website with content as we always have done Modified internal anchor text (this did seem keyword rich) My next steps I believe before giving up 😞 is checking our links coming into website? Is anybody able to please help me with regards to our links or point me in the right direction. I have no idea where to start or what do now? Someone may see something really obvious so any help or guidance is greatly appreciated to assist me in gaining some UK organic rankings back. Kind Regards, Mark
Technical SEO | | SparkyMarky0 -
Has anyone found a company pretending to be you on ebay
I have a question. I was going through my links and i have found a number of links from ebay on pages of products that it seems they are trying to state they belong to our company. I would like to know if anyone has come across this and what can be done about it.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Why does GWT fine duplicate descriptions where none exist?
On my website, www.heartspm.com, I have been gradually changing over local information to remove near duplicate content. I created templates to create near duplicates for regions (coastal, inland, valley, etc. Then I also have been gradually creating unique pages for each city, such as Poway, Santa Monica, etc. Either way, I have this component of the website built on a list of cities with SEO information unique to each one pulling in template information. Now to my question: I am getting most of these pages coming up with GWT duplicate meta description information even though the descriptions are quite different between city to city. I am viewing the source page generated as well as the descriptions that are displayed by Google on the search engine. These descriptions do not appear to duplicate to me. So why the error?
Technical SEO | | GerryWeitz0 -
Pages not being found in serp
Hi I'm helping a collegue with his website. For what ever reason the pages in the Solutions Menu are not being found in the search result for keywords related to the pages. (Homepage mainly comes up in the search result). Does anyone have any advise to why this may be happening? *To give you a bit of a background understanding, previously all the menu content was copied (which I made him change), he also had hidden text on some pages (i made him remove, white text on white background) plus the url structure changed as well. Persoanlly I think he is over using , links, internal linking is not great & the general content is not great in the menu. Your Thoughts are welcomed, thank you.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0