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.
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?
-
These extensions look like they are attachments. Go into GWT, click on the 404 link, then a box with pop up, click on the "Linked From" tab.. Go to the page and Ctrl U to see the source code. Do a CTRL F and search for the broken link. When you find it in your source code you should be able to figure out what's triggering that response. If you can't find the URLs in your source code, mark them as fixed and it should take care of the problem. Especially if they are older. It looks like it could be a shipment status, a product out of stock message, and a PDF of train schedules.
I would check the linked from pages and make sure that there isn't some erroneous code that is creating a page when it doesn't need to.
-
I think you could have is the following problem:
You got a Domain wich earned Links bevore and these Links are still out there. Google can see them and you will again and again see them in WMT.
You cant just say solved and than they are gone, caused by the backlinks. They come again.
Check that in WMT - I dont know how it is called in english versions (I just see the german), you can click on the 404 and than take a look at "what is linking to that page"
An easy solution in that case may be to disallow "/fs" for bots. (if you dont use fs in your url structure) -
The 404s start with the correct url for the site but are then suffixed after the forward slash with urls such as;
fs/201410/a_Royal_Mail_Item_Is_Currently_Being_Processed_For_Delivery_.html
/fs/201410/a_When_will_John_lewis_restock_the_Dr_Dre_beats_solo_hd_.html
fs/201410/a_Food_stalls_at_train_stations_in_London_.html
There are 10,000+ of these in my WMT account. I have never seen this before - any ideas?
-
Need more data to help, eh!
-
What do you mean "pages that have nothing to do with my site" are these not on your domain or are they on your domain but you are not familiar with them?
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
-
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | Dec 6, 2014, 3:21 PM | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
How to inform Google to remove 404 Pages of my website?
Hi, I want to remove more than 6,000 pages of my website because of bad keywords, I am going to drop all these pages and making them ‘404’ I want to know how can I inform google that these pages does not exists so please don’t send me traffic from those bad keywords? Also want to know can I use disavow tool of google website to exclude these 6,000 pages of my own website?
Technical SEO | Sep 8, 2014, 1:09 PM | renukishor4 -
How to create site map for large site (ecommerce type) that has 1000's if not 100,000 of pages.
I know this is kind of a newbie question but I am having an amazing amount of trouble creating a sitemap for our site Bestride.com. We just did a complete redesign (look and feel, functionality, the works) and now I am trying to create a site map. Most of the generators I have used "break" after reaching some number of pages. I am at a loss as to how to create the sitemap. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | Aug 12, 2013, 2:07 AM | BestRide0 -
Best way to handle pages with iframes that I don't want indexed? Noindex in the header?
I am doing a bit of SEO work for a friend, and the situation is the following: The site is a place to discuss articles on the web. When clicking on a link that has been posted, it sends the user to a URL on the main site that is URL.com/article/view. This page has a large iframe that contains the article itself, and a small bar at the top containing the article with various links to get back to the original site. I'd like to make sure that the comment pages (URL.com/article) are indexed instead of all of the URL.com/article/view pages, which won't really do much for SEO. However, all of these pages are indexed. What would be the best approach to make sure the iframe pages aren't indexed? My intuition is to just have a "noindex" in the header of those pages, and just make sure that the conversation pages themselves are properly linked throughout the site, so that they get indexed properly. Does this seem right? Thanks for the help...
Technical SEO | Jun 26, 2013, 6:35 PM | jim_shook0 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | Jun 2, 2013, 12:00 PM | reidsteven750 -
The word 'shop' in a page title
I'm reworking most of the page titles on our site and I'm considering the use of the word 'Shop' before a product category. ex. Shop 'keyword' | Brand Name As opposed to just using the keyword sans 'Shop.' Some of the keywords are very generic, especially for a top level category page. Question: Is the word 'Shop' damaging my SEO efforts in any way?
Technical SEO | May 6, 2013, 4:22 PM | rhoadesjohn0 -
How does Google find /feed/ at the end of all pages on my site?
Hi! In Google Webmaster Tools I find *.../feed/ as a 404 page in crawl errors. The problem is that none of these pages exist and they have no inbound links (except the start page). FYI, it´s a wordpress site. Example: www.mysite.com/subpage1/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage2/feed/ www.mysite.com/subpage3/feed/ etc Does Google search for /feed/ by default or why do I keep getting these 404´s every day?
Technical SEO | Jul 16, 2012, 11:56 AM | Vivamedia0 -
Google.ca is showing our US site instead of our Canada Site
When our Canadian users who search on google.ca for our brand (e.g. Travelocity, Travelocity hotels, etc.), the first few results our from our US site (travelocity.com) rather than our Canadian site (travelocity.ca). In Google Webmaster Tools, we've adjusted the geotargeting settings to focus on the appropriate locale, but the wrong country TLD is still coming up at the top via google.ca. What's the best way to ensure our Canadian site comes up instead of the US site on google.ca? Thanks, Tory Smith
Technical SEO | Jun 9, 2011, 5:12 PM | travelocitysearch
Travelocity0