Huge number of crawl anomalies and 404s - non- existent urls
-
Hi there,
Our site was redesigned at the end of January 2020. Since the new site was launched we have seen a big drop in impressions (50-60%) and also a big drop in total and organic traffic (again 50-60%) when compared to the old site.
I know in the current climate some businesses will see a drop in traffic, however we are a tech business and some of our core search terms have increased in search volume as a result of remote-working.
According to search console there are 82k urls excluded from coverage - the majority of these are classed as 'crawl anomaly' and there are 250+ 404's - almost all of the urls are non-existent, they have our root domain with a string of random characters on the end. Here are a couple of examples:
root.domain.com/96jumblestorebb42a1c2320800306682
root.domain.com/01sportsplazac9a3c52miz-63jth601
root.domain.com/39autoparts-agency26be7ff420582220
root.domain.com/05open-kitchenaf69a7a29510363
Is this a cause for concern? I'm thinking that all of these random fake urls could be preventing genuine pages from being indexed / or they could be having an impact on our search visibility. Can somebody advise please?
Thanks!
-
Unlikely, as long as they're returning 404 errors you should be OK. Maybe update your disavow file and you should be good to go!
-
Thanks for your reply.
I’m new to the business and I’ve found that that the old website had a spam attack, all of these fake urls are from the old pages (as they have 301s).
There are 82,000 crawl anomalies from these fake/spam URLs and around 200 404s. None of the fake /spam urls have been indexed. Could this be having a negative effect of search visibility/DA or rankings?
Thanks!
-
It's tough to say without seeing the site. Overall it's unlikely if you don't use that string anywhere. We usually see it more for broken relative URLs. Maybe a third party site is using that string.
-
Thanks for your reply, would broken urls from the internal linking structure explain the random characters? e.g. root.domain.com/96jumblestorebb42a1c2320800306682
We've never had any page content/urls relating to 'jumblestore'.
Thanks!
-
From what I can tell, this probably isn't the reasons for the drops. I'd go back and ensure that any URLs that changed are 301 redirecting to the correct destination URL. I'd also ensure that no pages that were associated with high volume keywords no longer exist.
For your issue, Google is likely finding some broken URLs, possibly from your internal linking structure. Perform a crawl of the site and see if you can find "Inlinks" to those broken pages. If so, you can work with dev to eliminate the issue.
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
-
Adding a parameter to the URL / URL Stracture
Dear Community, I would like to ask a question regarding url structure. We are struggling with shorting urls and we thought to add a "parameter" to the url. Example: domain.com/product**/a/** or domain.com**/a/**product/ Current url structure: domain.com/product/ So we go after and short url contains "/a/" and find the category we want. Is this going to harm our SEO strategies? Any idea is welcome.
Technical SEO | | geofil0 -
WP URL issue - Concatenated URLs (LOTS of them)
WP is doing this somehow, and creating URLs for hundreds of pages that don't exist. HOW is this happening, and how do I stop It? I have many, many URLS like this: https://www.atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use/atouchofrust.com/vendor-news. Of note, atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use, and atouchofrust.com/vendor-news are both legit pages on the site. Why they are being concatenated is beyond my limited understanding of WP. Please, somebody, help. Cori
Technical SEO | | FlyingC0 -
Changing URLs
As of right now we are using yahoo small business, when creating a product you have to declare an id, when we created the site we were not aware that you will not be able to change the id but also the ID is being used as the URL. we have a couple thousand products in which we will need to update the URLs. What would the best way to be to fix this without losing much juice from our current pages. Also I was thinking that if we did them all in a couple weeks it would hurt us a lot, and the best course of action would be to do a slow roll out of the URL changes. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | TITOJAX0 -
Magento URL change
We have a Magento website parked at HostGator. The site is comprised of both a PC and a mobile version. We changed the URL to a new one ... We made the domain changes in the ‘core_config_data’ (phpMyAdmin) ... We flushed the cache in the ‘File Manager’ part of cPanel (regular and mobile version) Currently we can access the http://newsite.com (on a desktop) with no problem ... We can also access http://m.newsite.com BUT… only from a desktop PC. When we try http://newsite.com from a MOBILE device, it routes to: http://m.OLDsite.com (it keeps going to the old URL) Need some help please. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
301 for a Very Long URL
Hey gang, Thanks ahead of time for the help. I have a url somehow that is very very long: http://www.colbysphotography.com/wedding-caterers-knoxville-east-tennessee/Here is an extensive list of wedding venues in the Knoxville and East Tennessee region. If you find that any of these links are not working, that the venues are no longer in business, or have a suggestion for an additional venue (at no charge), please contact Colby. Colby's Photography works hard on keeping this list helpful. I have tried Yoast Premium on a wordpress site to redirect the url but it doesn't seem to keep. I've tried a few other redirect plugins with not help either. I would love some suggestions on this one! Colby
Technical SEO | | littlecolby0 -
Changing URL of posts
HI, I need to change the urls and permalink structure of my blogposts. How I have to deal all this with google? Do I have to re-submit the pages to google with fetch as google? Will google display duplicate content of the same article ( having changed the url) or will it automatically replace the old url with the new ones? Tx for your support guys!
Technical SEO | | tourtravel0 -
How to fix these unwanted URLs?
Right now i have wordpress, one page website, but google also show wp-content. KIndly check below in google. site:http://baltimoreelite.com/ How I can fix this issue?
Technical SEO | | marknorman0 -
Deep Page Link - url no longer exists
I used Open Site Explorer and found a link to our site on http://www.business.com/guides/bedding-supplies-3639/ The link was setup to go to an important, deep page on my website, but the structure of our urls changed and the url no longer exists. The link (anchor text 'National Hospitality Supply') does direct to our homepage, www.nathosp.com. My question is, am I receiving full link juice? Or would I be better served to create a 301 redirect to the revised / new page url? In case it matters, if I had my choice I'd prefer the link to go to the intended deep page. Thanks in advance for your insight. -Josh Fulfer
Technical SEO | | mhans0