Webmaster Tools Question - Severe health issues...

seachto7

Hi all,

Did a search on some old webmaster tools threads, but most were a few years old, so posted a new one. Hope it's ok.

A site I am working with has been upgraded, etc etc, and some pages that were on it last year for example are no longer on it. URL is the same etc.

So, in webmaster tools I am aware of the alert: "Severe health issues are found on your site."

It is telling me that several pages can't be found (404). All of these pages are old pages and I don't want them to be found. It doesn't matter. So, I marked them as "fixed", but I still see the alert everyday.

The sitemap submitted is a new one too, so should I delete them from the server? Webmaster Tools is still picking them up somehow?

Resubmitted the sitemap to see if it makes a difference......

cormee

seachto7 wrote: »

Hi all,

Did a search on some old webmaster tools threads, but most were a few years old, so posted a new one. Hope it's ok.

A site I am working with has been upgraded, etc etc, and some pages that were on it last year for example are no longer on it. URL is the same etc.

So, in webmaster tools I am aware of the alert: "Severe health issues are found on your site."

It is telling me that several pages can't be found (404). All of these pages are old pages and I don't want them to be found. It doesn't matter. So, I marked them as "fixed", but I still see the alert everyday.

The sitemap submitted is a new one too, so should I delete them from the server? Webmaster Tools is still picking them up somehow?

Resubmitted the sitemap to see if it makes a difference......

It does matter though - you're probably losing valuable traffic, you need to redirect those URLs to valid pages, or, failing that you can make a request in Webmaster Tools for Google to de-index them.

link8r

seachto7 wrote: »

Hi all,

Did a search on some old webmaster tools threads, but most were a few years old, so posted a new one. Hope it's ok.

A site I am working with has been upgraded, etc etc, and some pages that were on it last year for example are no longer on it. URL is the same etc.

So, in webmaster tools I am aware of the alert: "Severe health issues are found on your site."

It is telling me that several pages can't be found (404). All of these pages are old pages and I don't want them to be found. It doesn't matter. So, I marked them as "fixed", but I still see the alert everyday.

The sitemap submitted is a new one too, so should I delete them from the server? Webmaster Tools is still picking them up somehow?

Resubmitted the sitemap to see if it makes a difference......

Not sure why the Sitemap will help. If you don't want the pages to be found, you can manually submit them for Removal. This takes about 24 hours (I think).

Make sure you have a 404-Error page (Custom, Google Snippet or other/server) and that the pages are removed from your XML Sitemap.

TBH, it shouldn't be a probem

mneylon

It sounds like the pages exist so use a 301 redirect to send them to the new pages..

Or if you want them completely removed from the index remove the files fully and submit a removal request (if the pages give a 404 they'll get removed eventually anyway .. )

seachto7

OK, so I resubmitted the sitemap, and it does not include the 404 pages.
I marked them as "fixed", so I don't get any crawl errors in Webmaster Tools.
However, in the Webmaster Tools overview I still get the alert.
The pages are not on the new site at all, nor is there a link that can be used to reach them......

blue4ever

Marking them "fixed" is for your consumption/comfort only! You actually have to fix them. You need to set up individual or block redirects to working pages for the now non-existent pages.

Because you have submitted a new sitemap can mean very little - esp if there are links to the old pages hanging around the web elsewhere.

Do the right thing, get each page that's listed and redirect it - either to the redeveloped sites front door - or, better still, to a page on the new site that might be close to the information in the old site (if not the same)

seachto7

Ok, I'll do that.

How do I get the list of 404s up again on Webmaster Tools. It seems they are gone since I marked them fixed, though I have a fair idea of the pages involved.

I do feel they may be on bad quality sites, as I had been trying out some paid link building.

Might be best if I request URL removal?

link8r

blue4ever wrote: »

Marking them "fixed" is for your consumption/comfort only! You actually have to fix them. You need to set up individual or block redirects to working pages for the now non-existent pages.

Because you have submitted a new sitemap can mean very little - esp if there are links to the old pages hanging around the web elsewhere.

Do the right thing, get each page that's listed and redirect it - either to the redeveloped sites front door - or, better still, to a page on the new site that might be close to the information in the old site (if not the same)

If the pages are removed from the index and a 404 is in place, and the webmaster is happy there are no Links to them, then the problem is fixed!

blue4ever

Webmaster Tools>Health>Crawl Errors

seachto7

I know where they are located in WT, but the alerts were still on the dashboard, but the URL were gone from the "health" section.

The alerts are gone now too....

blue4ever

I spoke too soon - and this may be of some help.

I took a look at my GWT account for one site and noticed that it suddenly had 600+ 'soft 404's - which was very odd as it was recent and the site will return a 404 page.

However when I linked through to the 'offending' pages the all came up as fine, content, pics, etc = very confusing.

I then took a few of the URL's and used 'fetch as google' in GWT to see what they returned. In the majority of cases all was good - bar one.

Reading the contents of the page returned it was a firewall message from my hosting company saying that 'i' (google in this case) "your local
computer has been blocked by the firewall" and it was blocking the ip address 66.249.66.90 Host:crawl-66-249-66-90.googlebot.com

!!!!!! Oooooooops

I rang the host (promptly), explained the story and they flushed the firewall - and it then returned the page ok as "fetch as google" and everything would seem to be ok again. Would never have copped that unless i used all the tools in GWT

So, the obvious wasn't that obvious!

blue4ever

seachto7 if you are still scanning this message - can I ask who the hosting account is with? I have serious issues now on a website due to the hosting provider constantly blocking Google IP address

seachto7

not sure who is hosting it, I will find out........

vikashmundaa

You need to remove the pages from the server or you can redirect the old pages to your homepage so that bots will not encounter 404 page not found error.