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Webmaster tools question about url errors

by bleu
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I had a store section on my site that I deleted around 3-5-15 so got a bunch of 404s yadda yadda...

I am still getting 404 errors, that's okay.

But what seems weird to me is that the date first detected on these new 404s says 4-26-15 and the linked from url is also 404 gone.

So how can Googlebot detect a 404 page linked from a page that doesn't exist?

And should I be concerned about that the date first detected says a few days ago when the pages have been gone for almost two months?

Thanks!
#errors #question #tools #url #webmaster
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by bleu View Post

    I had a store section on my site that I deleted around 3-5-15 so got a bunch of 404s yadda yadda...

    I am still getting 404 errors, that's okay.

    But what seems weird to me is that the date first detected on these new 404s says 4-26-15 and the linked from url is also 404 gone.

    So how can Googlebot detect a 404 page linked from a page that doesn't exist?

    And should I be concerned about that the date first detected says a few days ago when the pages have been gone for almost two months?

    Thanks!
    In that case the problem isn't a missing page.

    The problem is a link pointing to a page that doesn't exist, even If that link/URL is only a typo.

    Run Screaming Frog & look for broken internal links (404s). If it's not an internal link problem then it's a broken backlink from another domain, catch the 404/URL & do a 301 redirect to a live page.
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  • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
    I personally prefer Xenu over screaming frog, because it is faster and depending on the size of your site you may not be able to fully analyze it.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by patadeperro View Post

      I personally prefer Xenu over screaming frog, because it is faster and depending on the size of your site you may not be able to fully analyze it.
      I prefer Screaming Frog because IMO it's far easier to drill down to problems & easier to sort data. I haven't had any problems crawling sites.
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      • Profile picture of the author patadeperro
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        I prefer Screaming Frog because IMO it's far easier to drill down to problems & easier to sort data. I haven't had any problems crawling sites.
        Yes Screaming Frog have already build in many analysis tools while in Xenu you need to download them via CSV and do some data manipulation, that if you are not accustome to do it, it may be a pain the **s.
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  • Profile picture of the author bleu
    In that case the problem isn't a missing page.

    The problem is a link pointing to a page that doesn't exist, even If that link/URL is only a typo.
    Oh, I should also have said that the page linking to the page that does not exist is also on my site and was also deleted on 3-5-15. So there is no page pointing to the missing page. Both gone.

    That's why I don't understand. How is Googlebot crawling pages that do not exist? And why is it reporting pages that do not exist linked from pages that do not exist? And why is the date first detected a few days ago when the pages have been gone since 3-5?
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  • Profile picture of the author bleu
    In that case the problem isn't a missing page.

    The problem is a link pointing to a page that doesn't exist, even If that link/URL is only a typo.

    Run Screaming Frog & look for broken internal links (404s). If it's not an internal link problem then it's a broken backlink from another domain, catch the 404/URL & do a 301 redirect to a live page.
    There are no links pointing to the pages that do not exist on my site. I deleted the entire folder and never linked from anywhere else on the site.

    Webmaster tools shows the urls that the 404 pages are "linked from" they are all pages that do not exist.

    ...and today I am still getting more of these showing up with the first detected date being a few days ago - even though the entire folder was deleted back in March.

    It says "Googlebot couldn't crawl this URL because it points to a non-existent page."

    But it is crawling non-existent pages - it says it found the link by crawling a non-existent pages.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by bleu View Post

      There are no links pointing to the pages that do not exist on my site. I deleted the entire folder and never linked from anywhere else on the site.

      Webmaster tools shows the urls that the 404 pages are "linked from" they are all pages that do not exist.

      ...and today I am still getting more of these showing up with the first detected date being a few days ago - even though the entire folder was deleted back in March.

      It says "Googlebot couldn't crawl this URL because it points to a non-existent page."

      But it is crawling non-existent pages - it says it found the link by crawling a non-existent pages.
      Understand that Google digs, they dig deep when it comes to sites/host. There's almost always a backdoor (hidden links) especially when it comes to a CMS (ex: Wordpress).

      Difficult to suggest anything else without knowing the problem domain/URLs.
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      • Profile picture of the author bleu
        I don't use CMS, it's just a simple small hand coded site that I work on by myself.

        And webmaster tools is giving me the urls where it's finding the 404s so it's not a mystery of where they're coming from...

        I don't know, I'll just keep looking at it maybe I'll figure it out or it will just go away on it's own in time.
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        • Profile picture of the author yukon
          Banned
          Originally Posted by bleu View Post

          I don't use CMS, it's just a simple small hand coded site that I work on by myself.

          And webmaster tools is giving me the urls where it's finding the 404s so it's not a mystery of where they're coming from...

          I don't know, I'll just keep looking at it maybe I'll figure it out or it will just go away on it's own in time.
          Any xml sitemaps? Google will crawl those like they're regular links.

          Did you ever run Screaming Frog looking for 404s? Do that, it's free for 500 URLs.
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  • Profile picture of the author Hudson White
    First of all update your sitemap. Then resubmit your website in Google webmasters.

    Also you can implement 301-redirect to the pages which are giving 404 not found error and redirect them to the relevant page of your website.
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