How to fix search console crawl errors?
The primary tool of website owners and SEO professionals is Google Search Console. It provides information about how Google views your website and shows valuable data that help to improve its performance in search results. One of the most important features of Google Search Console is its ability to detect crawling errors. Crawl errors occur when Google’s web crawler Googlebot has trouble accessing your website. In order to prevent these mistakes, it is important to ensure that your website is fully indexed and ranks well in search results. In this blog, we will explore how to detect and fix crawl errors in Google Search Console.
Table of Content –
- What are Google search crawl errors?
- Common crawl errors and how to fix them
- Crawl responses
- Good Crawl Response Code
- Possibly Good Crawl Response Code
- Bad Crawl Response Code
- Reasons for dropping crawl rate
- Conclusion
What are Google search crawl errors?
Crawl errors occur when search engines try to access a page on your website but fail to do so.
Do you know why?
Because, Google came across an issue of crawling your website and faced several problems while detecting the URL.
So, this can negatively impact your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs), thus, it is important to review and resolve these errors.
These errors can be categorized into two main types:
Site Errors: This error is terminal for your whole website and blocks Googlebot from any part of it. Other website errors like the DNS mistakes, the server mistakes, and the robots. txt fetch errors.
URL Errors: These are the errors which happen when Googlebot faced some problems in accessing particular Web-pages at your website. Common URL errors include 404 (not found), 403 (forbidden) and 500 (server) errors.
Common crawl errors and how to fix them
DNS Errors
DNS errors prevail when for some reason Googlebot fails to access your site’s domain name system.
Solution:
- Check if you do not have issues with the DNS server and if it is not down today.
- Make sure that you are entering the domain name properly and also that the domain name is not expired.
- Although DNS errors do not seriously harm the system. They are unpleasant for users and this is why it is recommended to use a trusted DNS provider.
Server Errors (5xx)
Server issues show that Googlebot had a problem with your server. For example timeout or 500 internal server errors.
Solution:
- With that, you can analyze the server logs and find the actual problem which led to the error.
- Make sure your server is properly loaded with CPU, RAM and all other channel components etc to manage traffic.
- It is suitable for you to get a new hosting plan if experiencing many server errors.
Robots.txt Fetch Errors
These occur when Googlebot fails to crawl your robots.txt file or the specific request to your robots.txt file is not processed correctly. The file, with the ‘.txt’ file extension, explains how your site should be crawled.
Solution:
- Verify that your robots locates URL: yourdomain. com/robots. txt.
- Make sure there are now syntactic errors in the robots. txt file and can reach in it and mess up its format that would make it difficult to be read.
- Visit your server and try to look at the www configuration and see to it that the file isn’t being off by security preferences.
404 Not Found Errors
404 errors happen when Googlebot requests a page that doesn’t exist and a 404 page is returned.
Solution:
- To point the users and the search engines to the right location utilize 301 redirects from the broken URL to the viable page.
- Periodic checks should be made on the web site to ensure that there are no more broken links on it and if any, then it should be fixed or removed.
- Make sure all such trimmed pages return the correct 404 status and do not display soft 404 errors, which are seemingly 404 pages returning a 200 status.
403 Forbidden Errors
403 error messages are used when Googlebot is being informed that it has no permission to access the page.
Solution:
- The permissions of the pages that were affected should then be checked to make sure that they are set properly.
- Verify that your server’s .htaccess file is not blocking Googlebot’s access.
- Apply the “Fetch as Google” feature of Search Console to check and repair the access problems.
500 Internal Server Errors
These errors suggest an issue with the server for your website.
Solution:
- Any decent server will have logs that contain details about the error; check these logs to answer your question.
- Check that the version of the server software is uptodate and configured correctly.
- If still you encounter it then you need to consult with your host provider for help.
Crawl responses
Have you ever imagined how websites respond to your crawl bots which is also known as crawl response.
In web crawling and search engine optimization (SEO), a web crawler (or spider) displays feedback or data as you visit a web page url. This response provides important information about how a website is indexed by search engines.
Good Crawl response Code
200 OK
This status code indicates that the request was successful and the server returned the content that was requested.
The example of 200 OK status code is listed below –
When a user or search engine crawler requests https://www.TheManinderShow.com/about-us and the server successfully returns the “About Us” page then 200 OK status code is returned.
Possibly Good Crawl response Code
301 Moved Permanently
This status code indicates that the requested resource has been permanently moved to a new URL.
The example of 301 Moved Permanently status code is listed below –
If https://www.TheManinderShow.com/old-page is permanently moved to https://www.TheManinderShow.com/new-page, the server will return a 301 Moved Permanently status code for the old URL.
302 Found (Temporary Redirect)
This status code indicates that the requested resource has been temporarily moved to a different URL.
The example of 302 Found status code is listed below –
If a website is undergoing maintenance then https://www.TheManinderShow.com might temporarily redirect to https://www.TheManinderShow.com/maintenance with a 302 Found status.
Bad Crawl response Code
404 Not Found
This status code indicates that the requested resource could not be found on the server.
The example of 404 Not Found status code is listed below –
When a user or crawler requests https://www.TheManinderShow.com/nonexistent-page and the server cannot find the page then a 404 Not Found status code is returned.
403 Forbidden
This status code indicates that the server understood the request but refuses to authorize it.
The example of 403 Forbidden status code is listed below –
If a user tries to access a restricted page like https://www.TheManinderShow.com/admin and they lack proper permissions, the server returns a 403 Forbidden status code.
503 Service Unavailable
This status code indicates that the server is currently unable to handle the request due to temporary overloading or maintenance.
The example of 503 Service Unavailable status code is listed below –
If https://www.TheManinderShow.com is down for maintenance then 503 Service Unavailable status code may be returned along with a “Retry-After” header indicating when the server will be back up.
Conclusion
By actively checking for crawl errors in Google Search Console, you can ensure that Googlebot can crawl your website and index correctly. It can help you improve your search engine ranking and user experience through regular maintenance. It’s also the key to increased visibility on the Internet.
Through TheManinderShow, you can identify and resolve issues such as broken links, server errors and other crawl anomalies and effectively index your website. As a result, your website can be ranked at TOP on search engine platforms.
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