Identify Page Not Found Visits
-
Hello everyone! I have always known enough about Google Analytics and SEO to be dangerous, but was not a focus for me. I am working on a project were I am looking at stuff where my knowledge is limited.
The scenario is that the domain I am looking at will serve a 404 error, but keeps the url, I guess for tracking purposes.
At the same time, there is a page "Page_Not_Found" that has elevated visits.
-
I am not sure how to tell where the visits are coming from to the PNF since the Previous Page is mostly identified as "(entrance)"
-
Is the PNF correlated to the process of serving an error page but not changing the URL?
Ideally, I am looking to identify and improve the 404 visits. I hope that I provided clear enough information. Happy to provide more as needed.
-
-
@cayk I am not sure how to do that, but I might be able to research and ask around. Thank you.
-
@hankhoffmeier Additional to the other replies here, if you can add an image unique to the 404 error, you could get the information you're hunting for server-side by measuring the hits to the image in question. Many server side reporting tools will also allow showing image downloads by URL, which would workaround your core issue that with regard to the 404 URLS themselves.
-
@lynnpatchett Thank you. I tried ScreamingFrog. Where is did help with some items, it did not help me with the overall problem. I will keep researching.
-
@lynnpatchett said in Identify Page Not Found Visits:
If you think you have internal links to 404 pages try https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ - it is a tool to crawl your site and you can filter for your 404s and then see which of your pages the links are on. It is a real timesaver! The free version has some restrictions but should be enough to get you started,
Thank you for the link. That worked for me!
-
@lynnpatchett Thank you. I will take a look at both!
-
@hankhoffmeier Hi, bit of a late reply but try the following:
-
In analytics you can go to the behavior -> site content -> landing page report and the filter for your page not found url (or page title if it is common across 404s). This will give you external sites that are linking to one of your 404 pages.
-
If you think you have internal links to 404 pages try https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ - it is a tool to crawl your site and you can filter for your 404s and then see which of your pages the links are on. It is a real timesaver! The free version has some restrictions but should be enough to get you started,
Hope it helps!
-
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
-
Unsolved Ooops. Our crawlers are unable to access that URL
hello
Moz Pro | | ssblawton2533
i have enter my site faroush.com but i got an error
Ooops. Our crawlers are unable to access that URL - please check to make sure it is correct
what is problem ?0 -
Unsolved Solve a Lost GA Connection - can't get it to work
Hi, I followed all steps on https://moz.com/help/moz-pro/getting-started/troubleshoot-google-analytics?_ga=2.15852085.2007735045.1676157945-122376721.1676157945 below Solve a Lost GA Connection multiple times but I keep getting the message "Our connection to your Google Analytics account was lost. Don't worry, you won't lose any data. Please follow the steps in our guide to reconnect.
Moz Pro | | silvansoeters
" I am on the free trial and would obviously like to connect to GA to see how everything is working. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.0 -
Unsolved How does Moz compile the "Important pages on your site are returning a 4xx error!" report?
I have over 200 links in this report (mostly from a staging site). I have deleted that staging site and I cannot find the reference to the other links. So my question is, where is Moz finding these links?
Moz Pro | | nomad_blogger0 -
Why is my home page ranking much higher than my collection page?
Hi everyone, Why is my client's home page ranking high for a certain keyword phrase rather than a collection page I have which is well optimised for this keyword? The collection page is on the 10th SERPs page. I did see there were keywords used in the footer of page and the keyword was also used in some intro text on the home page so I removed the keyword from these two places nearly 2 weeks ago and requested google to reindex both the collection page and home page and I've not seen any improvement of the collection page's ranking in SERPs. I also changed the meta description and meta title as the ctr was poor but there wasn''t that many impressions either. It is a competitive keyword organically so maybe the collection page's authority is just not good enough compared to the competitors hence why they are choosing the home page as it has higher page authority however this still is not helpful to searchers who land on home page. Does anyone have any ideas of what else I can do to get google to rank the ocllection page higher for the keyword instead of home page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TZ19820 -
Images on their own page?
Hi Mozers, We have images on their own separate pages that are then pulled onto content pages. Should the standalone pages be indexable? On the one hand, it seems good to have an image on it's own page, with it's own title. On the other hand, it may be better SEO for crawler to find the image on a content page dedicated to that topic. Unsure. Would appreciate any guidance! Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater1 -
Links from non-indexed pages
Whilst looking for link opportunities, I have noticed that the website has a few profiles from suppliers or accredited organisations. However, a search form is required to access these pages and when I type cache:"webpage.com" the page is showing up as non-indexed. These are good websites, not spammy directory sites, but is it worth trying to get Google to index the pages? If so, what is the best method to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxweb0 -
Should I block temporary pages
I need some SEO advice on an odd scenario: We are launching a new product line (party supplies) on it's own domain (PartySuperCenter.com). Due to some internal/technical reasons we will not be able to launch the site until the summer. We already have the product in our warehouse so the owners want to created a section on our current site (CostumeSuperCenter.com) for the new products. Once the new site is up the product will be removed from our current site and moved to the new site. I am concerned about the effect this will have on our SEO - having thousands of product pages appear and then disappear after a few months. I was thinking about blocking the pages using the "noindex" tag. Is this how you would handle it? Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | costume0 -
Pricing Page vs. No Pricing Page
There are many SEO sites out there that have an SEO Pricing page, IMO this is BS. A SEO company cannot give every person the same quote for diffirent keywords. However, this is something we are currently debating. I don't want a pricing page, because it's a page full of lies. My coworker thinks it is a good idea, and that users look for a pricing page. Suggestions? If I had to build one (which I am debating against) is it better to just explain why pricing can be tricky? or to BS them like most sites do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0