Do sever errors affect SERPS
-
hoping someone can help
VPS has been causing me 10 days of server errors (im now moving off it) as my wordpress site has kept running out of memory. At the same time my traffic had dropped. Could google and bing be penalising me for number of errors, dropping me in SERPS and resulting in web traffic?
-
thanks alot - the issue is now solved so everything is back faster and better than ever.
-
Google's Matt Cutts posted a video about this exact issue you might want to check: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eYJuT0yGrI
Hope that helps!
-
To make the first answer full you must understand that if your site will not load quickly and correctly it will harm on behaviour factors which you can see in Google Analytics. Users will close your site faster and come back searching for other content to read. And this can be a sign for Google that your site is a low quality one.
-
Hi, the occasional server error won't affect your site in SERPs, but persistent issues over a shorter period of time are likely to. With this you would also be likely to see those errors reported in Google Webmaster Tools.
Essentially, if the search engines cannot index a site then they don't have anything to include in SERPs.
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
Help Me With These Horrible Crawl Errors
I am currently using Opencart to run a fairly popular ecommerce website. I have done quite well in terms of rankings so far. However, the Opencart platform only goes so far. There are endless amounts of crawl errors, from duplicate content down to missing meta tags. There is no easy way to add canonical tags. The pages that are being listed in the crawl errors seem to be mainly search URL's that i have no idea how Moz found them. An example of the page is: .....com/index.php?route=product/search&tag=home+office+flooring Which has ten duplicate pages all missing meta tags. I have used Google webmaster tools and htaccess to deny access to these pages with the slug "route=product/search" but it doesn't seem to work. So my question to you guys is as follows: Is it worth trying to fix these errors and do they have an effect on SEO? If so, how do I prevent these errors that seem to grow at every crawl? Cheers, Danny
Search Behavior | | DannyHoodless0 -
Local SERPs Question - Phone Call or Click?
I have a client who recently experienced a boost in local organic rankings. They were appearing towards the bottom of the local (maps) results (with their phone number & address listed) for their main target keywords. After this ranking boost, they are now positioned higher in the SERPs, in the traditional organic section. It seems as though this boost in rankings has actually caused a slight DECREASE in organic search traffic to their website. My theory is that when they were listed in the Google+ Local section of Google, some people must have been calling directly from the SERPs instead of actually clicking through to their website. Due to the issues involved with organic call tracking, it's obviously difficult to measure the actual impact of strong Google+ Local rankings. So, I'm on a mission to find some reliable data on this. For my own peace of mind and that of my client. Does anybody know of any research conducted that analyses the % of local searches that result in a phone call directly from the local SERPs without actually clicking through to a business' website or Google+ page? In know this is a tricky one (and probably harder to ascertain on desktop than mobile) but any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Search Behavior | | Dave_Eddy0 -
Does the title attribute affect CTR?
I've been trying to find some research or studies regarding the title attribute on links and if it affects CTR or perhaps another benefit to using it. I know that it's not a factor in search engines and there's some problems with the compatibility of it in various devices and browsers, but looking for any stats that show using could affect your CTR. Would love some actual studies versus opinions, but haven't found any.
Search Behavior | | benmarshall1 -
Any Good Study on the Effects of CTR on Keyword Capitalization in SERP Description
Hey Guys I am wondering if any of you have done any study or testing on this ( or perhaps you might have come across one at some point in your career ) Personally I feel that while adding a description , it makes sense to Capitalize the Keywords and other words ( first letter only ) that I want to emphasise on ( perhaps stuff like Buy, High Quality, Best, etc ) . I want to pick your brains on this and see what you guys think about it. I have not tested the effects on CTR yet .. if someone else has then it will be a good resource for me to go through. ( and if no one else has done any relevant study I might do it at some stage ). Regards Saijo
Search Behavior | | Saijo.George0 -
All pages were returning 404 for an hour. Will it impact the SERPS?
Hi, Due to a bug in my website system, all the pages were returning an 404 default page for a period of 1 hour. Can this event impact the SERPs of this site? (the site is heavily visited, more than 500k users coming from google every day, so I assume google crawls my pages every moment)
Search Behavior | | lucasms0 -
UK & Ireland Websites displaying same page differently in serps
Hi there, I have a Magento Enterprise store based in the UK and we have an Irish version which we created after finding an increasing amount of traffic from Ireland. One thing that I don't understand, is that if I search for one keyword on Google, the websites are displayed differently, when effectively they are identical websites. Here is how a result looks like for my UK store: http://i.imgur.com/NKSt4Qq.png And here is how a result looks like for my IE store: http://i.imgur.com/Cynv8Mz.png They both have the same Meta description, barring a few geographical words and terms. Both have on page descriptions as well as products. Yet the IE results display the description and the UK results display products and a tiny snippet of the description. Any ideas on how I can make my UK pages display like the IE one? Or, just why they are both displayed differently? Thanks
Search Behavior | | tomhall900 -
Spammy website dominating SERPs! Why!?
Hey guys, I've recently noticed that a series of EMDs have been setup to completely spam an extensive set of keywords - and it seems to be working. All of the URLs are keyword targeted with tons of keyword variations. And they're getting massive ranking preference over a number of more established websites. These are just an example of some of the domains; diykitchens1.co.uk fittedkitchens1.co.uk cheapkitchens1.co.uk kitchenunits1.co.uk And then there's loads of local targeted domains such as; kitchensglasgow1.co.uk kitchensedinburgh1.co.uk Again, all of these are getting high ranking with what seems to be duplicated websites. It's pretty bizarre. Will Google penalise these sites? Surely they will?
Search Behavior | | Webrevolve0 -
Theme influence in your SERP
Hello SeoMoz community. I'm a new member here and i took the 30 day trial to test out your tools and to check if i find a need to them. I've a situation that is bugging my mind for a few days and i wish i had more data to have more accurate information. I have a website that stayed on first in my SERP for a competitive term. I did it with a very few links because i focused a lot on the UX (mostly on site performance & layout) and the outcome was a good usability for my site. Since the latest panda my site dropped from first to fifth and then came the Google dance between 5th and the 15th position. Then i decided to change the theme because i saw loads of problems like the page titles, i fixed loads of 301's and 404's, gave it a more clean UX, removed some ads and fixed some of the url's making them shorter and more accrued. This stopped the Google dance completely! And now the site is on the 10th position. I'm not complaining about the positions or panda updates or whatever happened. I just would like some comments on this situation. And i would like to ask if a theme update making the site better (better is a very complicated word in the SEO world know) can give negative feedback to the search engines? Thank you.
Search Behavior | | luisvestia0