Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error.
-
Hello I'm a seo newbie and some help from the community here would be greatly appreciated.
I have submitted the sitemap of my website in google webmasters tools and now I got this warning:
"When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error. All accessible URLs will still be submitted."
How do I fix this? What should I do?
Many thanks in advance.
-
You need to confirm that the URLs are in fact 100% of your URLs going into the site map are accessible.
if it's a big issue in a big site send me the URL in a private message I will use deep crawl to create a XML sitemap for you. The screaming frog tool is excellent as well though does performance well with extremely large sites.
check your robots.txt file this so great tool if in case you have more than one (it happens)
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/robots-txt-generator/
or
http://tools.seochat.com/tools/robots-txt-validator/
so many great free tools are found right here http://tools.seochat.com/tools/
It could be a number of things although it could be Google being finicky. Run the site through Moz crawler, use feedthebot.com using "tools SEO" or download the free version of http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ this will tell you if there is an issue. If your site is static you can even create an alternate site map with screaming frog if your site is large use deep crawl or Moz analytics
be certain there are no sitemaps redirecting to each other so no redirects going from the old site map to the new site map. Make certain that the site map is in an XML format e.g. http://example.com/sitemap.xml or if in a different format like https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml make sure the proper format That resolves when you look at the site map is what is going into Webmaster tools. Be certain the site map does not contain over 500 URLs per the site map so example.com/sitemap1.xml and so on keep numbering them appropriately. sometimes Google is overloaded and does not seem to like to play well with certain site maps or the site map is maybe not generating very well on the server and that is fixed later on. If this is a long-term problem speak to your host or developer. My recommendation is if you've done everything I have talked about that you attempt to submit is the sitemap to to Webmaster tools or simply build a new sitemap and submit that.
so if worse comes to worse take the screaming frog and use this URL to send it to Google
http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/business-owner/
I hope that helps,
Thomas
-
Hi, It looks like you have url's placed in your sitemap that have an HTTP status error. You can search for the urls and remove them from your sitemap or make sure they have the right status. Does it say which status error? And does it say which url's? Did you check those url's?When you use Screaming frog spider tool (free), you can search for status error's this is an easy way to find these url's.
Grtz, Leonie
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
-
Folders in url structure?
Hello, Revamping an out-of-date website and am wondering if I need to include the folders (categories) in the url structure? The proposed structure has 8 main folders. I've been reading that Google is ok if the folder is not included in the url, but is it really? The hesitation I have is that the urls are getting long and the main folder only has only a sub folder beneath it. So, /folder-name/facility-name/treatment-overview. This looks too long, doesn't it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1230 -
Old URLs Appearing in SERPs
Thirteen months ago we removed a large number of non-corporate URLs from our web server. We created 301 redirects and in some cases, we simply removed the content as there was no place to redirect to. Unfortunately, all these pages still appear in Google's SERPs (not Bings) for both the 301'd pages and the pages we removed without redirecting. When you click on the pages in the SERPs that have been redirected - you do get redirected - so we have ruled out any problems with the 301s. We have already resubmitted our XML sitemap and when we run a crawl using Screaming Frog we do not see any of these old pages being linked to at our domain. We have a few different approaches we're considering to get Google to remove these pages from the SERPs and would welcome your input. Remove the 301 redirect entirely so that visits to those pages return a 404 (much easier) or a 410 (would require some setup/configuration via Wordpress). This of course means that anyone visiting those URLs won't be forwarded along, but Google may not drop those redirects from the SERPs otherwise. Request that Google temporarily block those pages (done via GWMT), which lasts for 90 days. Update robots.txt to block access to the redirecting directories. Thank you. Rosemary One year ago I removed a whole lot of junk that was on my web server but it is still appearing in the SERPs.
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB3 -
Url folder structure
I work for a travel site and we have pages for properties in destinations and am trying to decide how best to organize the URLs basically we have our main domain, resort pages and we'll also have articles about each resort so the URL structure will actually get longer:
Technical SEO | | Vacatia_SEO
A. domain.com/main-keyword/state/city-region/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature _
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village/kid-friend-pool_ B. Another way to structure would be to remove the location and keyword folders and combine. Note that some of the resort names are long and spaces are being replaced dynamically with dashes.
ex. domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature_
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village-kid-friend-pool_ Question: is that too many folders or should i combine or break up? What would you do with this? Trying to avoid too many dashes.0 -
Is it Detrimental to Repeat a Word in Our URL?
Hey guys! We run a tour company in Barcelona. Our company name is Barcelona Experience. We're customizing our URL's to include keywords which can be found in all the important areas on the page (title tage, meta descp., etc).
Technical SEO | | BarcelonaExperience
We want to change "www.barcelonaexperience.com/bike-tours" to "www.barcelonaexperience.com/barcelona-bike-tours"
We're worried the repetition of "barcelona" could be a bad thing. True, or not true? Thanks!0 -
Should the date be included in news URLs
My website is not a news or magazine site, but we do have a news section updated 2-3 times a week with industry related news. We are working on a new structure for the URLs.
Technical SEO | | theLotter
Should the date be included in the URL? From this article from Google I understand that as long as we submit a news sitemap it doesnt matter whether or not numbers are included in the URL, correct? https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/68323?topic=116650 -
Urls with or without .html ending
Hello, Can anyone show me some authority info on wheher links are better with or without a .html ending? Thanks is advance
Technical SEO | | sesertin0 -
Should me URLs be uppercase or lowercase
I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of 301 redirects for me site. Should I make them Lowercase, uppercase, or does it matter? Also, do I want to be using hyphens (-), or underscores (_)? Any other tips? EX: http://www.stupid.com/golf-slippers.html OR http://www.stupid.com/Golf-Slippers.html
Technical SEO | | JustinStupid0