[Very Urgent] More 100 "/search/adult-site-keywords" Crawl errors under Search Console
-
I just opened my G Search Console and was shocked to see more than 150 Not Found errors under Crawl errors. Mine is a Wordpress site (it's consistently updated too):
Here's how they show up:
Example 1:
- URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html/feed/rss2
- Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html
Example 2 (this surprised me the most when I looked at the linked from data):
-
URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/3/
-
Linked From:
-
www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/2/ (this is showing as if it's from our own site)
-
http://a-spammy-adult-site.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html
Example 3:
- URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html
- Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html
How do I address this issue?
-
Here is what I would do
-
Disavow the domain that is linking to you from the adult site(s).
-
The fact that Google search console is showing that you have an internal page linking as well makes me want to know a) have you always owned this domain and maybe someone previously did link internally like this or b) you may have been or are hacked
In the case of b) this can be really tricky. I once had a site that in a crawl it was showing sitewide links to various external sites that we should not be linking to. When I looked at the internal pages via my browser, there was no link as far as I could see even though it showed up on the crawler report.
Here was the trick. The hacker had setup a script to only show the link when a bot was viewing the page. Plus, we were running mirrored servers and they had only hacked one server. So, the links only showed up when you were spidering a specific mirrored instance as a bot.
So thanks to the hacking, not only were we showing bad links to bad sites, we were doing this through cloaking methodology. Two strikes against us. Luckily we picked this up pretty quick and fixed immediately.
Use a spidering program or browser program to show a user agent of Googlebot and go visit your pages that are linking internally. You might be surprised.
Summary
Googlebot has a very long memory. It may be that this was an old issue that was fixed long ago. If that was the case, just show the 404s for the pages that do not exist, and disavow the bad domain and move on. Make sure that you have not been hacked as this would also be why this is showing.
Regardless, the fact that Google did find it at one point, you need to make sure you resolve. Pull all the URLs into a spreadsheet and run Screaming Frog in list mode to check them all to make sure you fix all of it.
-
-
Yep.. Looking if anyone can help with this..
-
Oh yea, I missed that. That's very strange, not sure how to explain that one!
-
Thanks for the response Logan. What you are saying definitely makes sense.. But it makes think why do I see something like Example 2 under Crawl errors. Why Google Search Console shows linked from as 2 URL - one the spammy site's and other is from my own website. How is that even possible?
-
I've seen similar situations, but never in bulk and not with adult sites. Basically what's happening is somehow a domain (or multiple) are linking to your site with inaccurate URLs. When bots crawling those sites find the links pointing to yours, they obviously hit a 404 page which triggers the error in Search Console.
Unfortunately, there's not too much you can do about this, as people (or automated spam programs) can create a link to any site and any time. You could disavow links from those sites, which might help from an SEO perspective, but it won't prevent the errors from showing up in your Crawl Error report.
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
-
Website Indexing Issues - Search Bots will only crawl Homepage of Website, Help!
Hello Moz World, I am stuck on a problem, and wanted to get some insight. When I attempt to use Screaming Spider or SEO Powersuite, the software is only crawling the homepage of my website. I have 17 pages associated with the main domain i.e. example.com/home, example.com/sevices, etc. I've done a bit of investigating, and I have found that my client's website does not have Robot.txt file or a site map. However, under Google Search Console, all of my client's website pages have been indexed. My questions, Why is my software not crawling all of the pages associated with the website? If I integrate a Robot.txt file & sitemap will that resolve the issue? Thanks ahead of time for all of the great responses. B/R Will H.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarketingChimp100 -
Articles marked with "This site may be hacked," but I have no security issues in the search console. What do I do?
There are a number of blog articles on my site that have started receiving the "This site may be hacked" warning in the SERP. I went hunting for security issues in the Search Console, but it indicated that my site is clean. In fact, the average position of some of the articles has increased over the last few weeks while the warning has been in place. The problem sounds very similar to this thread: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/malware--hacked-sites/wmG4vEcr_l0 but that thread hasn't been touched since February. I'm fearful that the Google Form is no longer monitored. What other steps should I take? One query where I see the warning is "Brand Saturation" and this is the page that has the warning: http://brolik.com/blog/should-you-strive-for-brand-saturation-in-your-marketing-plan/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Liggins0 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Google Custom Searches with site CSS
Anyone good with GCS. I want to add Google custom searches in my site but with my site CSS.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csfarnsworth
I need results from GCS but want to display with my website CSS. Website is in OSCommerce and php.0 -
REPOST: How much does "overall site semantic theme" influence rankings?
Hello everyone on the new cool Moz! I've optimized sites before that are dedicated to 1, 2 or 3 products and or services. These sites inherently talk about one main thing - so the semantics of the content across the whole site reflect this. I get these ranked well on a local level. Now, take an e-commerce site - which I am working on - 2000 products, all of which are quite varied - cookware, diningware, art, decor, outdoor, appliances... there is a lot of different semantics throughout the site's different pages. Does this influence the ranking possibilities? Your opinion and time is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20101 -
Will Google bots crawl tablet optimized pages of our site?
We are in the process of creating a tablet experience for a portion of our site. We haven’t yet decided if we will use a one URL structure for pages that will have a tablet experience or if we will create separate URLs that can only be access by tablet users. Either way, will the tablet versions of these pages/URLs be crawled by Google bots?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbbseo0 -
Facebook "lockout"
I'm not sure what the correct term is, but I've visited websites that require me to like page 1 of an article, to view page 2. Little annoying but fair enough, they wrote the content, I clearly find it of value as I want page 2. I run a download website, with user generated content. We used to only allow downloads to members, this resulted in 5,000+ new signups per day and a massive userbase. We now allow guests to download content, the majority are freeloaders, not even a thank you to the artist. I am about to employ a system for guests, that forces them to like, tweet or G+ the download, for it to begin. If they don't, no download. Are there any SEO considerations here? The page this will be implemented on, isn't a crawlable page. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo-wanna-bs0 -
How do you rank in the "brands for:" section in Google's search results ?
There's a "brands for:" section that appears above the first organic listing for certain search queries. For example, if you search for "dedicated servers" in Google, you will see that a "brands for:" appears. How do you get listed there? Thanks, Brian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InMotionHosting0