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Fixing Google search console errors

Fixing Google search console errors
Fixing Google search console errors or former webmaster tools and how to fix them are perhaps one of the biggest challenges faced by SEOs. For example, keeping track of 12,000 error messages that appear in the Search Console can make you frustrated with rooting out these (seemingly unsolvable) errors. The key to solving the problem is to first know which errors have the most damaging effect and which ones are easy to fix. The reason for the importance of checking and paying attention to search console errors is the impact they have on users and your site’s ranking in Google search engine results.

SEO site analysis services in Neoseo, because of the importance of these search console errors, and you can easily get solutions and methods to fix your site errors using this Neoseo service.

For example, having thousands of 404 errors, especially those belonging to indexed addresses or linked to other pages, can potentially annoy your users. If they land on multiple 404 pages in the same section, their trust in your site will decrease and of course, it will cause frustration.

First of all, for those who are new to Google Search Console, we are going to provide some explanations:

What is Google Search Console?

Almost all the people who do the SEO work of the site like to see the site from the perspective of search engines like Google and Bing to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the site and to work harder for the growth of the site.

The use of a search console is also to show the site to the site owner from the perspective of search engines and users. This tool also existed in the past, but it was known by a different name. Google Search Console was previously known as Google Webmaster Tools.

In addition to helping to improve the SEO of your site and its content, this powerful tool tells you the problems that may have occurred on your site so that you can take action to solve them. In addition, by registering your site in the search console, you can find out whether your content is displayed in Google results or not.

Among the other facilities that Search Console provides to its users, it is possible to collect information about each page of the site and its position in Google results, the number of users entering your site, as well as the words that have given the most traffic to the site. , Cited.

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Getting started with Google Search Console

Now that we have understood the answer to the question “What is a search console” and are familiar with the functions and tasks that this tool does for sites, it is time to learn how to work with this tool and how to install it on the site. First of all, you should know that to use this tool, you have to prove your ownership to Google.

To install this tool on your site, you can do 2 things, one by adding a DNS record and the other by uploading a file. Which method you choose depends only on your taste and will not make a difference in the main functionality of the search console.

After you have registered your site in the tool, you can give access to other users so that they can use the search console to check the performance of the site. As the owner of the site, you will have access to all parts of the search console, but as a user, his access is limited.

4 very important parts of the Google console search tool

Before getting familiar with how to fix search console errors, it is better to know the different parts of this tool so that you don’t get confused when presenting the solution:

Correct redirect training for Google, error 404 not found, what is error 404

Overview section

When you enter the Google Console search tool, the first section that opens for you is the Overview section. This section is a summary of the data and information taken from the important sections of the search console, and we will describe each one below.

Performance Chart: This chart in the Overview section shows the number of clicks and site entries based on a specific date.

Indexing Chart: This chart shows the number of indexed pages on the site.

Experience section: Here you can see the status of the website based on 4 important items related to the user experience of your website. Page experience item that shows the user’s experience when visiting different pages based on specific factors. The Core web vitals item, like Page experience, is related to the user experience of the website, which is determined by specific factors such as LCP, FID, and CLS.

Enhancements Section: This section shows data from the review of different sections and different items. Paying attention to this data will help your website to have a better position in Google results, to be shown better and more attractive to the user, and to be generally more approved by Google.

In the following, we will examine each of the above sections in more detail.

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Performance section

One of the most useful and important parts of the Google search console tool is the performance part. This section has the following two tabs:

Search results

This section provides the following information on a series of specific items:

  • Total clicks: shows the number of clicks and site input in the form of graphs and specific numbers in specific periods
  • Total impressions: shows the number of website pages displayed in Google results in certain periods
  • Average CTR: shows the percentage of site pages displayed in Google results about the input.

Now you can see the above based on the following items:

  • Search type: You can specify the search type of users. Users on Google are either looking for a website or page (web) or looking for a specific image (Image) or looking for a specific video (Video) or looking for specific news (News). It is better to know that you can compare each of these items.
  • Query: Based on a specific keyword, you set the above data to display. For example, to see how many clicks your website has received with the phrase “mobile shopping” in a certain period and from which pages with this phrase, you must define the phrase “mobile shopping” as a query in this section. do.
  • Pages: See the number of clicks, impressions, and CTR based on a specific page address. For example, you want to find out what keywords, how much input a page of the site has in a certain period, and whether its content and main keyword are the same as another page or not.
  • Country: By choosing this option, you can find out from which country, how much input and clicks you have and display in the results.
  • Devices: This option is for when you want to find out whether your users are searching for your keywords more on mobile or a PC or any other device.

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Indexing section

A technical part of the use of the search console refers to the Indexing section. This section shows how many pages are indexed by Google since the last update, how many are not, and what errors and warnings are causing problems for Google to index your pages correctly.

We recommend that you check this tab regularly to see what errors and warnings are appearing on your website. However, you also get notifications when Google finds new errors.

Once you receive such a notification, you can check the error in more detail here. You may notice errors occur when, for example, redirects don’t seem to work properly, or Google is finding broken code or error pages in your theme.

By clicking the link, you can analyze the error deeper to see what specific URLs are affected. Once you’ve fixed the error, you can mark it as fixed to ensure Google retests the URL.

The most important indexing section, which is active for all sites, is the Pages section. By clicking on this section, you will see two graphs that show the number of pages indexed (indexed by Google) and the number of pages not indexed (not indexed by Google).

In the second part of this tab, you want the Why pages aren’t indexed title, which shows you the reasons why the pages are not indexed and the number of pages that are not indexed for that reason.

After you have fixed the search console errors related to each section of the Pages tab, you can request a review to fix it by clicking on its error (for example Page with redirect error) from the Why pages aren’t indexed section Submit to Google through the Validate fix option.

 

URL Inspection section

Another part of the search console application is related to the URL Inspection tool. This tool helps you analyze specific URLs.

You retrieve the page from Google’s index and compare it to the page that is now on your site to see if there are any differences. On this page, you can find more technical information, such as when and how Google crawls and how to display it when crawled.

Sometimes you also notice some errors. This may be about Google not being able to search your page correctly. It also provides information about the structured data contained in this URL.

The most important function of this section is to request a manual index for a page. You can create a manual index request by putting the page address in the top field of the tool. After sending the index request, you usually receive one of the following two messages:

1- URL is on Google: it means your page is indexed. Now, to request indexing again (it is better to reject the manual indexing request after updating a page), click on the Request INDEXING option.

2- URL is not on Google: If you encounter this message, it means that the page is not indexed. From the lower part of this message, you can guess where the problem of not being indexed comes from.

What is Restricted by robots.txt, what is Soft 404, what is Google Unreachable

Enhancement tabs section

Here you will find everything you need to improve the performance of your site. It’s information about site speed, mobile usability, AMP usage, and structured data enhancements that are likely to lead to rich results in the SERPs.

Most search console sites have the following sections in the Enhancements tab. Note that your website must have the items in this section, or rather, the programmer has activated these items for you. Otherwise, no specific data can be seen in the Enhancements section.

Google considers the crawl budget for each site based on various factors; This means that the time for checking each site by Google is limited, and 404 errors, in addition to the problems mentioned above, cause a waste of the site’s crawl budget.

Training on how to fix search console errors

The most important search console errors in the Indexing section will be described below. As mentioned in the Why pages aren’t indexed section, there may be some cases that, if not corrected, will harm the site’s SEO. In the following, we will fully review all the errors related to the Indexing section and describe the methods to fix them.

The submitted URL has a crawl issue

This error occurs when Google’s crawlers have trouble crawling an address on the site. This problem may occur for various reasons. To solve it, you must first check the address of the desired page from the URL inspection section. After the review is completed, the problems for crawling that page will be displayed by a special code.

Note that on WordPress sites, this error may be displayed in the search console due to the synchronization of some plugin or WordPress core update with Google crawl, and in fact, the error is not real. To solve this problem, it is enough to register an index request (Request Index) for the page in question.

Submitted URL blocked by robots.txt

Using the robot.txt file, you can determine which pages and addresses of your site can be checked and indexed by robots. In other words, you can use this file and the codes in it to ask the robots not to check some specified pages.

The Submitted URL blocked by the robots.txt error is just a notification, not an error. The page in question may be properly blocked by the robots.txt file. You must first click on the URL of the page and check whether you want that page to be checked by Google robots or not.

Now, if you find that the desired page is wrongly blocked in the robots.txt file, you must first remove the restriction of that page in the robots.txt file, then click the Validate Fix button. Also, make sure that the desired address is not in your sitemap.

Server-related errors (5xx)

Server errors usually appear in the form of errors 500, 502, 503, and 504, and the presence of the number 5 at the beginning of them indicates that the error is from the server side of your site. Solving server errors usually requires your special expertise, and you can get help from your website hosting support to solve such cases.

 submitted URL not found (404)

A 404 error is an HTTP status code that means the page the user is trying to reach cannot be found on the site’s server, or the page is not loading for the user because it no longer exists. This error may occur for the following reasons.

  • The desired page must be completely deleted from the server.
  • An internal link or backlink has been linked to a page with a wrong address that does not exist on your site.
  • The page has been deleted and no redirect has been considered for it.

To fix the 404 error, you need to check the reason for its occurrence. If the desired page has been removed from the server and it already had a good rank in the search results, you should redirect it to a related page 301 and if that page does not have a good rank, you can use redirect 410.

An error Submitted URL marked noindex

This is one of the most important search console errors. Submitted URL marked no index error occurs when one of the pages in your sitemap has a no index feature. This should not happen because it can waste your crawl budget and even reduce it from Google. To fix the Submitted URL marked no index error, you must do the following.

  1. If the new index feature of the page placed in the sitemap was created by mistake, remove that feature from the page.
  2. If the new index feature for the site is not wrongly placed and you want it not to be displayed by Google in the search results, remove the address of that page from your sitemap.

WordPress SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math automatically remove non-indexed pages from the sitemap. But keep in mind that the no index tag may be defined at the HTTP Header level, which is outside of WordPress and managed at the web server level.

 The submitted URL seems to be a soft 404

Among other search console errors, the submitted URL seems to be a soft 404 error. This error indicates that Google bots have found a page address in your sitemap that Google considers a soft 404.

Soft 404 refers to a page whose code received from the server is not 404, but 200. But Google cannot find any content in it. Code 200 is a code that is sent to pages without problems from the server side and they do not have any errors.

In other words, soft 404 pages are pages that, despite having a 200 code, their content is not visible to Google robots. To solve this problem, you should check the desired page and its content and remove the factor that caused the problem.

Redirect errors

As their name suggests, these errors are related to redirects. If a problem occurs while redirecting, this error will appear in your search console, and finding a way to solve it requires a lot of research.

As mentioned, many items in the Why pages aren’t indexed section in the Indexing tab of the search console are not errors; But they may be as important as errors. In the following, we will examine some of the most important warnings that may appear in the Excluded search console, which are now all collected in the Why pages aren’t indexed section.

 Duplicate without user-selected canonical warnings

As you probably know, when you have to have two or more pages with the same or very similar content on your website, you should use the canonical tag. so that one of those similar pages should be selected as a reference page and other pages that have the same content as; Give it a canonical reference page.

The Duplicate without user-selected canonical warnings error occurs when Google does not index the desired page due to finding a page with content copied from other pages of the site and the lack of canonical warnings.

To fix this error, you should either change the content of the relevant pages to the point where they are not the same or canonicalize the pages that are less important for you to the more important page.

If even 40% of the content of two pages is the same, canonical must be used; Otherwise, Google will consider it as duplicate content.

 Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical

The circumstances of this error are the same as the previous one, with the difference that you have also registered an index request for the page in question, in addition to not using canonical. Follow the steps below to fix the Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as a canonical error:

  • From the URL Inspection section, find out which page Google has considered as the canonical page of this page. Check whether Google has correctly chosen the canonical page or not.
  • If the page selected as canonical by Google was the right page for this task, canonicalize the page with the error to the page selected by Google.
  • If you think there is a more suitable page than the page chosen by Google for canonicalization, canonicalize the page with the error to the page you want. Also, it is better to give an internal link to a page that you consider normal, with the main text anchor, from the page with an error and the page selected by Google.

Page With Redirect warning in search console

This case only indicates the pages that have been redirected and it cannot be considered an error. Just check the relevant addresses and see if the redirection is done correctly or not.

 Crawled – currently not indexed

This error means that the page in question has been checked by Google, but it is not in Google’s list to be displayed to users in the search results. Google does not provide a clear answer regarding the reason why these pages are not indexed, but usually, this error can be fixed with the following methods.

  • Increasing the quality and quantity of content on the page
  • Make sure that the desired page has an optimal structure and source.
  • Make sure that the content on the page is unique and not copied from anywhere else on the web.

 discovered – currently not indexed

This case is not included in the category of console search errors and is just a notification. The meaning of the discovered – currently not indexed message is that the desired page has been found by Google, but has not yet been checked and indexed. For pages with quality content, this will resolve over time.

The occurrence of the discovered – currently not indexed warning is usually normal on large sites that have a large number of pages (more than 10,000 pages) and is resolved after a while.

Warning excluded by no index tag

The warning excluded by no index tag is not considered an error in the search console and it only displays pages with the no index tag. It is enough to check the pages with this warning and make sure that they are not re-indexed by mistake. If the new index was correctly entered for the page, make sure that its URL is not in your sitemap. If among the pages with the warning excluded by no index tag, there were pages that were wrongly indexed, just remove their no index tag.

Conclusion

The Google Search Console tool is not without problems. While we admire the power of Google for what it sees, there are still things that need to be improved. Google is the best search engine in the world, but you cannot see all the problems of your site in the search console. But still, this tool is the best option for finding site problems, so take console search errors seriously.

 

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Zabih Bakhtiari
Zabih Bakhtiari

"I created a website sharing my tech expertise and offer web design and development services to assist others."

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