[Very Urgent] More 100 "/search/adult-site-keywords" Crawl errors under Search Console
-
I just opened my G Search Console and was shocked to see more than 150 Not Found errors under Crawl errors. Mine is a Wordpress site (it's consistently updated too):
Here's how they show up:
Example 1:
- URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html/feed/rss2
- Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword/page2.html
Example 2 (this surprised me the most when I looked at the linked from data):
-
URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/3/
-
Linked From:
-
www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html/page/2/ (this is showing as if it's from our own site)
-
http://a-spammy-adult-site.com/search/adult-site-keyword-2.html
Example 3:
- URL: www.example.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html
- Linked From: http://an-adult-image-hosting.com/search/adult-site-keyword-3.html
How do I address this issue?
-
Here is what I would do
-
Disavow the domain that is linking to you from the adult site(s).
-
The fact that Google search console is showing that you have an internal page linking as well makes me want to know a) have you always owned this domain and maybe someone previously did link internally like this or b) you may have been or are hacked
In the case of b) this can be really tricky. I once had a site that in a crawl it was showing sitewide links to various external sites that we should not be linking to. When I looked at the internal pages via my browser, there was no link as far as I could see even though it showed up on the crawler report.
Here was the trick. The hacker had setup a script to only show the link when a bot was viewing the page. Plus, we were running mirrored servers and they had only hacked one server. So, the links only showed up when you were spidering a specific mirrored instance as a bot.
So thanks to the hacking, not only were we showing bad links to bad sites, we were doing this through cloaking methodology. Two strikes against us. Luckily we picked this up pretty quick and fixed immediately.
Use a spidering program or browser program to show a user agent of Googlebot and go visit your pages that are linking internally. You might be surprised.
Summary
Googlebot has a very long memory. It may be that this was an old issue that was fixed long ago. If that was the case, just show the 404s for the pages that do not exist, and disavow the bad domain and move on. Make sure that you have not been hacked as this would also be why this is showing.
Regardless, the fact that Google did find it at one point, you need to make sure you resolve. Pull all the URLs into a spreadsheet and run Screaming Frog in list mode to check them all to make sure you fix all of it.
-
-
Yep.. Looking if anyone can help with this..
-
Oh yea, I missed that. That's very strange, not sure how to explain that one!
-
Thanks for the response Logan. What you are saying definitely makes sense.. But it makes think why do I see something like Example 2 under Crawl errors. Why Google Search Console shows linked from as 2 URL - one the spammy site's and other is from my own website. How is that even possible?
-
I've seen similar situations, but never in bulk and not with adult sites. Basically what's happening is somehow a domain (or multiple) are linking to your site with inaccurate URLs. When bots crawling those sites find the links pointing to yours, they obviously hit a 404 page which triggers the error in Search Console.
Unfortunately, there's not too much you can do about this, as people (or automated spam programs) can create a link to any site and any time. You could disavow links from those sites, which might help from an SEO perspective, but it won't prevent the errors from showing up in your Crawl Error report.
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
-
Can you disallow links via Search Console?
Hey guys, Is it possible in anyway to nofollow links via search console (not disavow) but just nofollow external links pointing to your site? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lohardiu90 -
Redirect wordpress from /%post_id%/%postname%/ to /blog/%postname%/
Hi what is the code to redirect wordpress blog from site.com/%post_id%/%postname%/ to site.com/blog/%postname%/ We are moving the site to a new server and new url structure. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
Error 404 Search Console
Hi all, We have a number of 404 https status listed in Search Console even treated, not decrease. What happened: We launched a website with the urls www.meusite.com/url-abc. We launched these urls sitemap. Google has indexed. ... For some reason, the urls were changed four days later by some developer in my equipe. So I asked the redirection of URLs "old" already indexed to the new (of: / url-abc to / url-xyz) all correspondingly. I submit the sitemap with new urls. We fixed the internal links. And than marked as fixed in the Search Console. But it does not work! Has anyone had a similar experience? Thanks for any advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mobic0 -
Using hreflang="en" instead of hreflang="en-gb"
Hello, I have a question in regard to international SEO and the hreflang meta tag. We are currently a B2B business in the UK. Our major market is England with some exceptions of sales internationally. We are wanting to increase our ranking into other english speaking countries and regions such as Ireland and the Channel Islands. My research has found regional google search engines for Ireland (google.ie), Jersey (google.je) and Guernsey (google.gg). Now, all the regions have English as one their main language and here is my questions. Because I use hreflang=“en-gb” as my site language, am I regional excluding these countries and islands? If I used hreflang=“en” would it include these english speaking regions and possible increase the ranking on these the regional search engines? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SilverStar11 -
News Errors In Google Search Console
Years ago a site I'm working on was publishing news as one form of content on the site. Since then, has stopped publishing news, but still has a q&a forum, blogs, articles... all kinds of stuff. Now, it triggers "News Errors" in GWT under crawl errors. These errors are "Article disproportionately short" "Article fragmented" on some q&a forum pages "Article too long" on some longer q&a forum pages "No sentences found" Since there are thousands of these forum pages and it's problem seems to be a news critique, I'm wondering what I should do about it. It seems to be holding these non-news pages to a news standard: https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787?hl=en For instance, is there a way and would it be a good idea to get the hell out of Google News, since we don't publish news anymore? Would there be possible negatives worth considering? What's baffling is, these are not designated news urls. The ones we used to have were /news/title-of-the-story per... https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/2481373?hl=en&ref_topic=2481296 Or, does this really not matter and I should just blow it off as a problem. The weird thing is that we recently went from http to https and The Google News interface still has us as http and gives the option to add https, which I am reluctant to do sine we aren't really in the news business anymore. What do you think I should do? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Why is Google ranking irrelevant / not preferred pages for keywords?
Over the past few months we have been chipping away at duplicate content issues. We know this is our biggest issue and is working against us. However, it is due to this client also owning the competitor site. Therefore, product merchandise and top level categories are highly similar, including a shared server. Our rank is suffering major for this, which we understand. However, as we make changes, and I track and perform test searches, the pages that Google ranks for keywords never seems to match or make sense, at all. For example, I search for "solid scrub tops" and it ranks the "print scrub tops" category. Or the "Men Clearance" page is ranking for keyword "Women Scrub Pants". Or, I will search for a specific brand, and it ranks a completely different brand. Has anyone else seen this behavior with duplicate content issues? Or is it an issue with some other penalty? At this point, our only option is to test something and see what impact it has, but it is difficult to do when keywords do not align with content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
Keyword research when the site's subject is low volume
Hey guys, what do you do when you planning a new website and doing keyword research for a site when the avg. search volumes are relatively low. We set up run contact centres for UK charities including voice, webchat, sms, email and response fulfillment etc. It seems that people aren't really searching that often for this 'sexy subject'. Average volumes for searches with some intent/qualifier range from between 10-100 monthly searches. What sort of strategies would you adopt in this scenario? Do you optimise for what you can and then make a large focus on other digital marketing tactics such as content marketing, social media, email marketing etc. Thanks for your time guys Leo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Leo_Woodhead0 -
How to perform Local SEO for sites like Angies List/Task Rabbit or Craigslist
I have a new SEO client that has a business model similar to Criagslist and Angies List or Task Rabbit, Where they offer local based services nationwide. My first thought was Local link building and citation building etc. But the issue is they are a purely online service company and they don't have a phyiscal address in every city/state they will be offering their services in. What is the best course of action for providing SEO services for this type of business model. I am pretty much at a stand still on how to rank them locally for the areas they provide services in. it's a business model that involves local businesses and customers looking for services from those local businesses.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VITALBGS0