Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error.
-
Hello I'm a seo newbie and some help from the community here would be greatly appreciated.
I have submitted the sitemap of my website in google webmasters tools and now I got this warning:
"When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error. All accessible URLs will still be submitted."
How do I fix this? What should I do?
Many thanks in advance.
-
You need to confirm that the URLs are in fact 100% of your URLs going into the site map are accessible.
if it's a big issue in a big site send me the URL in a private message I will use deep crawl to create a XML sitemap for you. The screaming frog tool is excellent as well though does performance well with extremely large sites.
check your robots.txt file this so great tool if in case you have more than one (it happens)
http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/robots-txt-generator/
or
http://tools.seochat.com/tools/robots-txt-validator/
so many great free tools are found right here http://tools.seochat.com/tools/
It could be a number of things although it could be Google being finicky. Run the site through Moz crawler, use feedthebot.com using "tools SEO" or download the free version of http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ this will tell you if there is an issue. If your site is static you can even create an alternate site map with screaming frog if your site is large use deep crawl or Moz analytics
be certain there are no sitemaps redirecting to each other so no redirects going from the old site map to the new site map. Make certain that the site map is in an XML format e.g. http://example.com/sitemap.xml or if in a different format like https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml make sure the proper format That resolves when you look at the site map is what is going into Webmaster tools. Be certain the site map does not contain over 500 URLs per the site map so example.com/sitemap1.xml and so on keep numbering them appropriately. sometimes Google is overloaded and does not seem to like to play well with certain site maps or the site map is maybe not generating very well on the server and that is fixed later on. If this is a long-term problem speak to your host or developer. My recommendation is if you've done everything I have talked about that you attempt to submit is the sitemap to to Webmaster tools or simply build a new sitemap and submit that.
so if worse comes to worse take the screaming frog and use this URL to send it to Google
http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/business-owner/
I hope that helps,
Thomas
-
Hi, It looks like you have url's placed in your sitemap that have an HTTP status error. You can search for the urls and remove them from your sitemap or make sure they have the right status. Does it say which status error? And does it say which url's? Did you check those url's?When you use Screaming frog spider tool (free), you can search for status error's this is an easy way to find these url's.
Grtz, Leonie
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
-
URL has caps, but canonical does not. Now what?
Hi, Just started working with a site that has the occasional url with a capital, but then the url in the canonical as lower case. Neither, when entered in a browser, resolves to the other. It's a Shopify site. What do you think I should do?
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
How do I customize Magento product urls?
I would like my product urls to be /category/manufacturer/name/part#. This would be the only url the item uses and how the product is accessed. It would also be used for product feeds. My first attempt was to use https://amasty.com/magento-unique-product-url.html This creates a single url but I can not customize it. Sometimes it selects the manufacturer and sometimes the category. My second attempt was with https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/custom-product-urls-seo.html I have it installed but it doesn't change the urls. Has anyone been able to do this successfully?
Technical SEO | | Tylerj0 -
Which Sitemap to keep - Http or https (or both)
Hi, Just finished upgrading my site to the ssl version (like so many other webmasters now that it may be a ranking factor). FIxed all links, CDN links are now secure, etc and 301 Redirected all pages from http to https. Changed property in Google Analytics from http to https and added https version in Webmaster Tools. So far, so good. Now the question is should I add the https version of the sitemap in the new HTTPS site in webmasters or retain the existing http one? Ideally switching over completely to https version by adding a new sitemap would make more sense as the http version of the sitemap would anyways now be re-directed to HTTPS. But the last thing i can is to get penalized for duplicate content. Could you please suggest as I am still a rookie in this department. If I should add the https sitemap version in the new site, should i delete the old http one or no harm retaining it.
Technical SEO | | ashishb010 -
Best URL format for pagination
We're currently changing the URL format of our website search, we have been discussing a lot and cannot decide the past way to pass the pagination parameter for SEO. We narrowed down to the options. www.website.com/apples/p2 - www.website.com/apples?page=2 - www.website.com/apples/page/2 What would give us best ranking returns? What do you think?
Technical SEO | | HelpSaude0 -
Approved Word Separators in URLs
Hi There, We are in the process of revamping our URL structure and my devs tell me they have a technical problem using a hyphen as a word separator. There's a whole lot of competing recommendations out there and at this point I'm just confused. Does anyone have any idea what character would be next-best to the hyphen for separating words in a URL? Any reason to prefer one over another? Some links I've found discussing the topic: This page says that "__Google has confirmed that the point (.), the comma (,) and the hyphen (-) are valid word separators in URL’s.": http://www.internetofficer.com/seo/google-word-separator/ This page suggests the plus (+) symbol would be best: http://labs.phurix.net/posts/word-separators-in-urls This guy says he's tested and there's a whole bunch of symbols that will work as word separators: http://www.webproguide.com/articles/Symbols-as-word-separators-a-look-inside-the-search-engine-logic/ I'm leaning towards the tilde (~) or the plus (+) sign. Usage would be like so: http://www.domain.com/shop/sterling~silver OR /shop/sterling+silver etc... Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | Richline_Digital1 -
Old URL redirect to New URL
Alright I did something dumb a year a go and I'm still paying for it. I changed my hyphenated URL to the non-hyphenated version when I redesigned my website. I say it was dumb because I lost most of my link juice even though I did 301 redirects (via the htaccess file) for almost all of the pages I could find in Google's index. Here's my problem. My new site took a huge hit in traffic (down 60%) when I made the change and even though I've done thousands of redirects my old site is still showing up in the SERPS and send much if not most of my traffic. I don't want to take the old site down in fear it will kill all of my traffic. What should I do? Is there a better method I should explore then 301 redirects? Could the other site be affecting my current rank since it's still there? (FYI...both sites are built on the WP platform). Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank you! Joe
Technical SEO | | kaje0 -
Should me URLs be uppercase or lowercase
I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of 301 redirects for me site. Should I make them Lowercase, uppercase, or does it matter? Also, do I want to be using hyphens (-), or underscores (_)? Any other tips? EX: http://www.stupid.com/golf-slippers.html OR http://www.stupid.com/Golf-Slippers.html
Technical SEO | | JustinStupid0 -
Duplicate canonical URLs in WordPress
Hi everyone, I'm driving myself insane trying to figure this one out and am hoping someone has more technical chops than I do. Here's the situation... I'm getting duplicate canonical tags on my pages and posts, one is inside of the WordPress SEO (plugin) commented section, and the other is elsewhere in the header. I am running the latest version of WordPress 3.1.3 and the Genesis framework. After doing some testing and adding the following filters to my functions.php: <code>remove_action('wp_head', 'genesis_canonical'); remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');</code> ... what I get is this: With the plugin active + NO "remove action" - duplicate canonical tags
Technical SEO | | robertdempsey
With the plugin disabled + NO "remove action" - a single canonical tag
With the plugin disabled + A "remove action" - no canonical tag I have tried using only one of these remove_actions at a time, and then combining them both. Regardless, as long as I have the plugin active I get duplicate canonical tags. Is this a bug in the plugin, perhaps somehow enabling the canonical functionality of WordPress? Thanks for your help everyone. Robert Dempsey0