How to Fix Crawling and Indexing Errors in Google Search Console

Posted in Technical SEO

Google Search Console is a vital tool for monitoring and maintaining your website’s presence in Google search results. It provides insights into how well your site is performing and highlights issues that could prevent it from being properly crawled and indexed by Google. Crawling and indexing errors can negatively affect your search rankings, so it’s important to identify and fix these issues promptly.

In this article, we’ll walk you through common crawling and indexing errors in Google Search Console and provide steps on how to resolve them.

What Are Crawling and Indexing Errors?

Before diving into how to fix these errors, it’s essential to understand what they mean.

  • Crawling errors occur when Google’s bots (called Googlebot) try to access a page on your site but encounter issues that prevent them from doing so. This could be due to a server issue, a broken link, or a blocked resource.
  • Indexing errors happen when Google is unable to add a page to its index. If a page isn’t indexed, it won’t appear in search results, which means users won’t be able to find it.

These errors are reported in the Coverage section of Google Search Console, which shows which pages are successfully indexed, which are excluded, and which have errors.

Common Crawling and Indexing Errors in Google Search Console

  1. Server Errors (5xx)
  2. 404 Not Found
  3. Soft 404 Errors
  4. Blocked by robots.txt
  5. Crawl Anomalies
  6. Redirect Errors
  7. Duplicate Without Canonical Tag

Let’s explore these errors in detail and look at how to fix them.

1. Server Errors (5xx)

Server errors (typically 500 or 503) occur when Googlebot tries to access your site, but the server is unavailable or too slow to respond.

How to fix server errors:

  • Check server uptime: Ensure your hosting provider is reliable and that your server isn’t frequently down.
  • Increase server resources: If you are experiencing high traffic or server load, consider upgrading your hosting plan or increasing your server’s CPU and RAM.
  • Monitor server logs: Check your server logs to identify the root cause of the error. This can reveal server misconfigurations, overloads, or other issues.
  • Optimize database performance: If you have a large site, ensure your database is optimized to handle requests efficiently.

2. 404 Not Found

A 404 error means that the page Googlebot is trying to access doesn’t exist. This usually happens when a page is deleted or the URL is changed without a proper redirect.

How to fix 404 errors:

  • Set up 301 redirects: If a page is permanently removed or the URL has changed, use a 301 redirect to send users (and Googlebot) to the new location of the content.
  • Fix broken internal links: Use tools like Screaming Frog to find and fix broken internal links that point to 404 pages.
  • Restore deleted pages: If a page was removed accidentally, consider restoring it or creating a new page with relevant content.
  • Update external links: If other websites link to a page that no longer exists, contact the site owners and ask them to update the link.

3. Soft 404 Errors

A soft 404 error occurs when a page appears to load successfully but doesn’t provide the expected content. Google sees it as a non-existent page, even if the server responds with a 200 OK status.

How to fix soft 404 errors:

  • Improve page content: If the page is lacking substantial content or is thin, add relevant information, media, or resources to make the page more useful to users.
  • Implement proper 404 responses: If the page truly doesn’t exist, ensure the server returns a 404 status code rather than a 200. This tells Google that the page should not be indexed.
  • Set up 301 redirects: If the page has moved, use a 301 redirect to point to the new location.

4. Blocked by robots.txt

The robots.txt file instructs search engines which parts of your site they can or cannot crawl. If a page is blocked by robots.txt, Googlebot will not be able to crawl or index it.

How to fix robots.txt issues:

  • Review your robots.txt file: Check your robots.txt file to ensure that important pages are not blocked. You can access it by adding /robots.txt to your website’s URL.
  • Allow crawling for essential pages: If important pages (like your homepage or product pages) are blocked, remove the disallow rule from the robots.txt file.

For example, if you’re blocking an entire directory but want to allow certain pages, your robots.txt might look like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /private/
Allow: /private/page-allowed.html
  • Use the URL inspection tool: In Google Search Console, use the URL Inspection Tool to check whether a specific page is blocked by robots.txt.

5. Crawl Anomalies

Crawl anomalies refer to issues where Googlebot is unable to crawl a page, but the exact error doesn’t fall into the typical categories (like 404 or server errors). These are often more difficult to diagnose.

How to fix crawl anomalies:

  • Check server logs: Look at your server logs to identify what might have caused the anomaly (such as timeouts or resource limitations).
  • Inspect page elements: Ensure that important elements like images, JavaScript, and CSS files aren’t being blocked by robots.txt or have restricted permissions.

6. Redirect Errors

Redirect errors occur when a page has too many redirects, is stuck in a redirect loop, or points to a non-existent page. Redirects are important for maintaining SEO, but if done incorrectly, they can cause issues.

How to fix redirect errors:

  • Fix redirect chains: A redirect chain happens when multiple redirects are chained together, causing unnecessary delays. Ensure that all redirects go directly from the original page to the final destination.

For example, instead of: Page A → Page B → Page C Update it to: Page A → Page C

  • Eliminate redirect loops: A redirect loop occurs when a page redirects to itself or creates an endless loop of redirects. Fix the loop by redirecting the page to the correct destination.
  • Check 404 after redirects: Ensure that redirected pages lead to a valid destination and don’t return a 404 error.

7. Duplicate Without Canonical Tag

When Google encounters duplicate content without proper canonical tags, it may not know which version of the page to index, which can hurt your SEO. Canonical tags tell search engines which version of a page is the “master” or preferred version.

How to fix duplicate content issues:

  • Add canonical tags: If you have duplicate or very similar pages, add a canonical tag to the head section of the page to point to the preferred version.

For example:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://www.example.com/preferred-page">
  • Consolidate duplicate content: If you have multiple pages with similar content, consider consolidating them into one authoritative page.
  • Use 301 redirects: For pages that should no longer exist, set up 301 redirects to direct users and search engines to the correct version.

General Tips for Fixing Crawling and Indexing Errors

  1. Monitor Google Search Console regularly: Google Search Console sends notifications when errors are detected, so regularly reviewing and resolving them can prevent bigger issues down the line.
  2. Use the URL Inspection Tool: This tool allows you to check whether specific pages are indexed, how they’re viewed by Google, and if there are any crawl errors or coverage issues. After making corrections, you can request Google to re-crawl the page.
  3. Submit an updated sitemap: If you’ve fixed crawling or indexing errors, submit an updated XML sitemap in Google Search Console to help Google discover your new pages faster.
  4. Ensure a mobile-friendly design: Google uses mobile-first indexing, so ensure your site is mobile-friendly. Pages that aren’t optimized for mobile may struggle to be properly crawled or indexed.

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