So you decided to remove a post or a page (from your blog or website) like nobody's business when in fact, it is a business. I am talking about the mess that Mr Search Engines have to face, trying to find the page or post he found yesterday, but now is gone. If someone created a back link to this post, it is worse, because it means there will be more attempts to find, and he will never find it. When this happened, you have crawl errors.
Crawl errors may happen for many reasons, and the one mentioned above is only one simple example. Other than removing your page or post, it can due to act of changing the tags, categories, changing the format of the permalink and many more. I will demonstrate this shortly
Why is crawl errors bad?
1. When search engine cannot find it, he is in mess
2. When search engine is in mess, he will not give your blog/website a good rank. Good rank means searchable. (there are many opinions on this, but let's just do it while we can)
So, I (still) have sore fingers from yesterday afternoon, removing most of the crawl errors found in my free blogspot and paid domain and trust, I will never let it accumulated this much again, next time.
To do this, I will use another free Google product called the Webmaster Tool. Remember the 70% and the eat-and-sleep-there I mentioned in my previous blog post? To explain why Google matters.
So let's start:
Below are 2 snapshots of crawl errors of mine. I have 46 crawl errors in one of my blogspot yesterday and now has reduced to 10, and 118 crawl errors in my paid domain, which has now reduced to 8. (that makes 146 errors removal attempts yesterday x 10 click per removal (apprx) = and caused the sore fingers. See how the graph has significantly went down today.
Ok let's see how to this:
1. To do this, first you have to have a google account, and go to the Webmaster tool. From the side menu, select Health> crawl errors. You will be able to see the screen as above and below (zoom in), the list of urls with bad crawl errors are listed there.
2. Next you need to verify if really each of the listed url is bad, and can be removed just like that (cannot undone once done, unless still with pending status) . Usually you will know (from past activities like deleting a post or restructuring your web and etc) and can simply go ahead and delete, but no harm to verify first before doing
3. So I am taking my paid domain as an example and show how to remove the crawl error url in line 6. This is a bad url created due to my past activity of enabling a wordpress plugin for translation purposes, but later to discover, it is bad for SEO. (lang=en means it duplicated the post and translate it into English, the original post is in Bahasa)
4. So what you do next is to click that line and a window will pop-out to tell what the error is about. Atcually this error is due to 2 reasons 1. enabling the translator plugin, then removing it 2. change the permalink format. (later you can google what all these means)
5. Let's verify if really this page is really gone (and useless) before deleting, click the url link and it will open the link to your blog//website window
6. So now I am good to delete this ( because I know what-I did-last-summer) and go ahead by selecting from the side menu, Optimization> Remove URLs> Crete a new removal request (notice I already have one pending for deletion in my list, with same issue)
7. Now you can paste the url there, and click continue
Crawl errors may happen for many reasons, and the one mentioned above is only one simple example. Other than removing your page or post, it can due to act of changing the tags, categories, changing the format of the permalink and many more. I will demonstrate this shortly
Why is crawl errors bad?
1. When search engine cannot find it, he is in mess
2. When search engine is in mess, he will not give your blog/website a good rank. Good rank means searchable. (there are many opinions on this, but let's just do it while we can)
So, I (still) have sore fingers from yesterday afternoon, removing most of the crawl errors found in my free blogspot and paid domain and trust, I will never let it accumulated this much again, next time.
To do this, I will use another free Google product called the Webmaster Tool. Remember the 70% and the eat-and-sleep-there I mentioned in my previous blog post? To explain why Google matters.
So let's start:
Below are 2 snapshots of crawl errors of mine. I have 46 crawl errors in one of my blogspot yesterday and now has reduced to 10, and 118 crawl errors in my paid domain, which has now reduced to 8. (that makes 146 errors removal attempts yesterday x 10 click per removal (apprx) = and caused the sore fingers. See how the graph has significantly went down today.
 |
| my blogspot crawl errors. |
 |
| my Paid domain crawl errors |
Ok let's see how to this:
1. To do this, first you have to have a google account, and go to the Webmaster tool. From the side menu, select Health> crawl errors. You will be able to see the screen as above and below (zoom in), the list of urls with bad crawl errors are listed there.
2. Next you need to verify if really each of the listed url is bad, and can be removed just like that (cannot undone once done, unless still with pending status) . Usually you will know (from past activities like deleting a post or restructuring your web and etc) and can simply go ahead and delete, but no harm to verify first before doing
3. So I am taking my paid domain as an example and show how to remove the crawl error url in line 6. This is a bad url created due to my past activity of enabling a wordpress plugin for translation purposes, but later to discover, it is bad for SEO. (lang=en means it duplicated the post and translate it into English, the original post is in Bahasa)
4. So what you do next is to click that line and a window will pop-out to tell what the error is about. Atcually this error is due to 2 reasons 1. enabling the translator plugin, then removing it 2. change the permalink format. (later you can google what all these means)
5. Let's verify if really this page is really gone (and useless) before deleting, click the url link and it will open the link to your blog//website window
 |
| Add caption |
6. So now I am good to delete this ( because I know what-I did-last-summer) and go ahead by selecting from the side menu, Optimization> Remove URLs> Crete a new removal request (notice I already have one pending for deletion in my list, with same issue)
7. Now you can paste the url there, and click continue
8. Go ahead and click Submit Request
9. And it is done! Pending to be removed my My Googlebot (the name of Google search engine)
10. Now if you still have the Health > crawl errors window still open, you can go ahead and click the button "Mark as fixed"
12. Review the list of crawl error page, now the list has reduced from 8 to 7.
13. Normally the pending list will clear the next day and now you your blog/website is free of one crawl error. Wait, remember if you have 1000 errors, it means you have to repeat this process 999 times. (I have seen someone screamed to tell this in a forum)
Good Luck
10. Now if you still have the Health > crawl errors window still open, you can go ahead and click the button "Mark as fixed"
11. Click ok >> remember this jingle, it just came from no where :) >> Bob the builder, can we fix this? Bob the Builder, yes WE CAN!
 |
| Add caption |
13. Normally the pending list will clear the next day and now you your blog/website is free of one crawl error. Wait, remember if you have 1000 errors, it means you have to repeat this process 999 times. (I have seen someone screamed to tell this in a forum)
Good Luck
