Google Webmaster Tools reports 404s for plain text. Should I create those URLs and 301 them to actual pages?
-
IA few years back I noticed that Google Webmaster Tools returns 404s from regular text containing a URL, but no anchor tag. I came accross this again today. Is it worthwhile to create those URLs and 301 redirect them to proper pages.
-
Hi Svetoslav,
Great question because I saw exactly something like this a couple of weeks ago in our own Google Webmaster Tools. Google tried to crawl "urls" on our side which were used to generated pageviews for Google Analytics by using the _trackPageview. So we had a lot of urls like "/print" within our Not Found crawl errors.
I won't recommend creating new URLs and using a 301 redirect to "cover" them, for a couple of reasons:
- From my opinion the Not Found errors do not harm you're rankings within the SERPs, to give you an idea or maybe you experienced it yourself. We have ten thousands of Not Found errors because our content changes on a daily basis and we saw it makes no sense.
- Google is trying to crawl urls which don't exist because they are text, so it looks like to me they are doing something wrong.
- And I also would like to share this thread from WebmasterWorld ( ), it includes an interesting angle in my opinion: "S_ave the 301 (and its machine process) for important cases"._
What do you think?
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
-
Google Webmaster Tools is saying "Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt" after Https move...
Hi Everyone, I really don't see anything wrong with our robots.txt file after our https move that just happened, but Google says all URLs are blocked. The only change I know we need to make is changing the sitemap url to https. Anything you all see wrong with this robots.txt file? robots.txt This file is to prevent the crawling and indexing of certain parts of your site by web crawlers and spiders run by sites like Yahoo! and Google. By telling these "robots" where not to go on your site, you save bandwidth and server resources. This file will be ignored unless it is at the root of your host: Used: http://example.com/robots.txt Ignored: http://example.com/site/robots.txt For more information about the robots.txt standard, see: http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html For syntax checking, see: http://www.sxw.org.uk/computing/robots/check.html Website Sitemap Sitemap: http://www.bestpricenutrition.com/sitemap.xml Crawlers Setup User-agent: * Allowable Index Allow: /*?p=
Technical SEO | | vetofunk
Allow: /index.php/blog/
Allow: /catalog/seo_sitemap/category/ Directories Disallow: /404/
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /downloader/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /lib/
Disallow: /magento/
Disallow: /pkginfo/
Disallow: /report/
Disallow: /stats/
Disallow: /var/ Paths (clean URLs) Disallow: /index.php/
Disallow: /catalog/product_compare/
Disallow: /catalog/category/view/
Disallow: /catalog/product/view/
Disallow: /catalogsearch/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /control/
Disallow: /contacts/
Disallow: /customer/
Disallow: /customize/
Disallow: /newsletter/
Disallow: /poll/
Disallow: /review/
Disallow: /sendfriend/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /wishlist/
Disallow: /aitmanufacturers/index/view/
Disallow: /blog/tag/
Disallow: /advancedreviews/abuse/reportajax/
Disallow: /advancedreviews/ajaxproduct/
Disallow: /advancedreviews/proscons/checkbyproscons/
Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/
Disallow: /productquestions/index/ajaxform/ Files Disallow: /cron.php
Disallow: /cron.sh
Disallow: /error_log
Disallow: /install.php
Disallow: /LICENSE.html
Disallow: /LICENSE.txt
Disallow: /LICENSE_AFL.txt
Disallow: /STATUS.txt Paths (no clean URLs) Disallow: /.php$
Disallow: /?SID=
disallow: /?cat=
disallow: /?price=
disallow: /?flavor=
disallow: /?dir=
disallow: /?mode=
disallow: /?list=
disallow: /?limit=5
disallow: /?limit=10
disallow: /?limit=15
disallow: /?limit=20
disallow: /*?limit=250 -
Duplicate Meta Titles and Descriptions Issue in Google Webmaster Tool
Hello All, We have one site named http://www.bargains-online.com.au/ & have some categories along with filter option on left side like filter by price & by brand, ect. We have already set rel canonical tags on all filtered pages, but still those all pages showing duplicate page titles and description warning in HTML Improvements section in Google Webmaster Tool. For Example: http://www.bargains-online.com.au/pressure-cleaners.html We've set rel canonical tag on below pages. http://www.bargains-online.com.au/pressure-cleaners/l/manufacturer:black-eagle.html http://www.bargains-online.com.au/pressure-cleaners/l/price:2,100.html http://www.bargains-online.com.au/pressure-cleaners/l/price:3,100.html Kindly request if anybody has any solutions for the same, please share with us. Thanks, Akshay
Technical SEO | | akshaydesai0 -
After I 301 redirect duplicate pages to my rel=canonical page, do I need to add any tags or code to the non canonical pages?
I have many duplicate pages. Some pages have 2-3 duplicates. Most of which have Uppercase and Lowercase paths (generated by Microsoft IIS). Does this implementation of 301 and rel=canonical suffice? Or is there more I could do to optimize the passing of duplicate page link juice to the canonical. THANK YOU!
Technical SEO | | PFTools0 -
Google webmaster errors
**If you know what these google webmasters errors mean, and you can explain it to me in simple english and tell me how I can locate the problem, I would really appreciate it!. <colgroup><col width=""><col width=""><col width=""><col width=""><col width="*"><col width="124"><col width="54"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO
| | | | | Server error | | | | Soft 404 | | | | Access denied | | Not found | | | Not followed | | | |** I have many of these errors, is it harming SEO?Yoseph0 -
I have custom 404 page and getting so much 404 error on Google webmaster, what should i do?
I have a custom 404 page with popular post and category links in the page, everyday i have 404 crawl error on webmaster tools, what should i do?
Technical SEO | | rimon56930 -
On-Page Report Card & Rel Canonical
Hello, I ran one of our pages through the On-Page Report Card. Among the results we are getting a lower grade due to the following "critical factor" : Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical Explanation If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL. Recommendation We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply. This is for an e-commerce site, and the canonical links are inserted automatically by the cart software. The cart is also creating the canonical url as a relative link, not an absolute URL. In this particular case it's a self-referential link. I've read a ton on this and it seems that this should be okay (I also read that Bing might have an issue with this). Is this really an issue? If so, what is the best practice to pass this critical factor? Thanks, Paul
Technical SEO | | rwilson-seo0 -
How to display the exact url of our subsite in Google
Hi, I'm new to SEO and we just recently relaunched our site. Our site consist of 6 hotels that acts as a subsite. We noticed that when search for one of the hotels what is coming in the google is the main website. Example: We search for flora grand. We expect that in Google it will display the first link as www.florahospitality.com/dubai-flora-grand-hotel.aspx. But it show the main site which is www.florahospitality.com What do I miss here?
Technical SEO | | shebinhassan0 -
How do i Organize an XML Sitemap for Google Webmaster Tools?
OK, so i used am xlm sitemap generator tool, xml-sitemaps.com, for Google Webmaster Tools submission. The problem is that the priorities are all out of wack. How on earth do i organize it with 1000's of pages?? Should i be spending hours organizing it?
Technical SEO | | schmeetz0