“Crawl errors” reports in Google search console have ever bothered you? Put a full stop to your worries related to crawl errors. We are putting here some light on the solutions to cope up with this common issue as this has a direct effect on the performance of the website.
Before proceeding further, let’s scratch some knowledge about crawling and crawl errors.
What is Crawling?
Crawling, a process where a search engine tries to visit every page of your website via bot. First of all, a Search Engine finds every link of your website and then starts to find all your public pages from there.
Crawl Errors
It occurs when a search engine tries to visit every page of your website but is not able to do so. This led to an adverse impact on the ranking of your website on any search engine which is a big no-no for all.
Before diagnosing the issue let’s first get to know the real cause and types of the issue.
There are two main parts of the Search Console:
- Site Error
- URL Error
There is a big difference between both types of errors.
Site level Errors issues can be grievous and can cause severe damage to your site’s usability. Whereas, URL Errors are confined to only individual pages and therefore requires comparatively less attention.
Ideally, you should check your site error at least every 90 days to keep an eye for previous error so that measures can be taken to prevent them in future.
- Site error: Three types of errors are shown under the Site Error section of the report:
- DNS Error
- Robot Failure
- Server Errors
DNS Error– DNS (Domain Name System) errors are the most eminent errors. When you connect the domain to the internet and the internet connection is disabled, an error message pops up showing “unable to connect to the internet”. Or if an error occurs while changing the DNS address, then it a DNS Error.
Robot Failure– When we remove a page or post by robots.txt, it takes a few days for the link to be removed in the search engine. At the time, if a visitor opens the link that is being shown in the search engine, then this error comes.
Server Errors– When your server takes too long to open up your website, then it is due to Server Errors. It occurs due to the slow speed of internet or if there are flaws in the code. The message of request time is called server connectivity error. There is a difference between DNS Error and Server Error. In the former, you can’t open the URL of the website but, in the latter one URL is opened but you can’t load the page because of server errors. This server error also means that the site has too many visitors which the server just couldn’t handle.
- URL Error
Many website owners face issue regarding a number of URL Errors which occurs when the Googlebot tries to crawl some specific pages of your website.
Types of URL errors:-
- Mobile Specific Error
- Desktop Specific Error
Mobile Specific Error– A page specific crawl errors that affect the new technological advanced mobile phones. This type of error is not or less acknowledged if you are using a responsive website. By simply maintaining a separate mobile subdomain makes way for these types of errors.
Desktop Specific Errors– Errors that occurred when your site was crawled by Googlebot on the desktop.
Below are the ways to avoid URL errors.
- Update your Sitemap– Clean your sitemaps by removing older URLs. In case you are adding new sitemaps, then be sure the old sitemaps are deleted first. this is one of most opted SEO strategy.
- Keep Redirects Clean and Short– Redirect your URLs in a sequence in case you have lots of URLs. Redirecting and sequencing can be difficult for Googlebot.
How to Fix these Issues?
First of all, go to the Google Search Console Webmaster Tools through email ID. Once you click on Add Website in the Search Console, you will access the Search Console Dashboard.
- Now click on the crawl option.
- Click on Crawl Errors.
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- Check all error links in desktop, smartphone, feature phone
- Select all the error links and click the Mark Blast Fixed button. And your error links will be fixed.
For better website search ranking, fix the crawl error after every 4-5 days in the search console, so that you get the organic traffic from the search engine and experience an increase in the website traffic too.
Ranking your website on a Search Engine is an imminent task for site owners and any barrier coming in its way is not acceptable. By going through the following errors and its ways to fix it, you will have a sigh of relief.