Crawl errors for pages that no longer exist
-
Hey folks,
I've been working on a site recently where I took a bunch of old, outdated pages down. In the Google Search Console "Crawl Errors" section, I've started seeing a bunch of "Not Found" errors for those pages. That makes perfect sense.
The thing that I'm confused about is that the "Linked From" list only shows a sitemap that I ALSO took down. Alternatively, some of them list other old, removed pages in the "Linked From" list.
Is there a reason that Google is trying to inform me that pages/sitemaps that don't exist are somehow still linking to other pages that don't exist? And is this ultimately something I should be concerned about?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the question, this can definitely be annoying for webmasters!
Unfortunately, bots can don't everything in parallel. They have to take steps...
Step 1. Take List #1 of links.
Step 2. Crawl those links and build List #2.
Step 3. Crawl List #3 and build List #4...Now, sometimes it doesn't follow that same order. Let's say that in Step 3 it finds a bunch of pages with unique content. Maybe the next time around, it goes and checks some of those links in Step 3 without first checking if they were still linked. Why start the crawl all the way from the beginning again when you have a big list of URLs?
But, this creates a problem. When some of those links it crawled in Step 3 aren't there any more, Google will tell you they aren't there and tell you how they originally found them (which happened to be from a page in List #1). But what if Google hasn't checked that link in List #1 recently? What if you just removed it too?
Well, for a little while, at least, you will end up with errors.
Now, here comes the real rub - how long will it take for Google to find and correct that message it left you in the crawl report? Days? Weeks? Months? Who knows. Your best bet is to mark them as fixed and force Google to keep rechecking. Eventually, they will figure it out.
TL;DR; it is a data freshness and reporting issue that isn't your fault and isn't worth your time.
-
No - Google is just showing how slow it is when updating data in Webmaster tools.
Don't worry - if you wait long enough they'll go away. You could also mark them as solved (do this only if you are sure that there are no links pointing to these pages - to check if your internal linking is ok Screaming Frog is great tool)
Dirk
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
-
How important is Lighthouse page speed measurement?
Hi, Many experts cite the Lighthouse speed as an important factor for search ranking. It's confusing because several top sites have Lighthouse speed of 30-40, yet they rank well. Also, some sites that load quickly have a low Lighthouse speed score (when I test on mobile/desktop they load much quicker than stated by Lighthouse). When we look at other image rich sites (such as Airbnb, John Deere etc) the Lighthouse score can be 30-40. Our site https://www.equipmentradar.com/ loads quickly on Desktop and Mobile, but the Lighthouse score is similar to Airbnb and so forth. We have many photos similar to photo below, probably 30-40, many of which load async. Should we spend more time optimizing Lighthouse or is it ok? Are large images fine to load async? Thank you, Dave bg_05.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | erdev0 -
Fire a tag when element is loaded on page (Google Tag Manager)
I'm using an Element Visibility trigger to track a value that appears on a page. However, I want to track this value even when the user doesn't scroll to the area of the page where the element is (i.e. when the page is loaded, and the value is displayed below the fold, but the user doesn't scroll down there). Is there a way of doing this
Reporting & Analytics | | RWesley0 -
Google Analytic showing Bounce Rate More than 100% i.e. 2000%, 3000% Bounces for Many Pages
Hello Guys, Google Analytic showing Bounce Rate More than 100% i.e. 2000%, 3000% etc for Many Pages. Can anyone let me know what is the issue? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dsouzac0 -
Page Rank - logarithmic or exponential
Possibly a really stupid question. Is Page Rank logarithmic or exponential? I've seen a lot of people talking about Page Rank saying it's logarithmic but when they describe it they're actually talking about an exponential scale. (Apologies if I'm showing a basic misunderstanding in mathematical knowledge - I studied Drama)
Reporting & Analytics | | BenFox0 -
Previously performing page no longer ranking
The best performing page on my website www.danielalexandra.com/personal-training/ has suddenly completely fallen off the google radar and all of my ranking results for keywords have dropped significantly as a result. My domain is only 4/5 months old but was already becoming relatively competitive and generating some interest until this? Any ideas as to why this may have happened?
Reporting & Analytics | | DAlondon0 -
Confirmation page gets hit multiple times by some users. How I can I segment out unique visits?
Hi All, I'm web marketing manager at http://www.evenues.com which is like an AirBnB for meeting space. When calculating the number of bookings for our meeting spaces, I've set up a goal in analytics with the confirmation page as the goal URL. The problem is, it seems that some users are looking at the same confirmation page several times. We have unique URLs for each confirmation page, but some users seem to be visiting these unique pages more than 2 to 5 times. This skews our numbers a bit. This makes things a bit problematic when it comes to segmenting visitors. is there anything we can so that each unique URL visited only counts once? Thanks, Kenji
Reporting & Analytics | | eVenuesSEO0 -
Increase number of pages crawled
Only one page is being crawled, how do I increase the number to include most of our site?
Reporting & Analytics | | NorthCoast0 -
Never Crawled!
This page has not been crawled for five months: http://www.flowerpetal.com/index.jsp?info=13 1/2 that time it was linked to from the homepage of a pr5 site: http://flowerpetal.com/ Why is this the case?
Reporting & Analytics | | tylerfraser0