What do Google Search Console Errors Mean?
Google Search Console is an invaluable tool when it comes to keeping tabs on your website and ensuring it’s moving on up in the SERP.
Arguably one of its best features is the Errors section, allowing you to see where things are going right, and, more importantly, where things are going wrong. Your website can run into all kinds of technical difficulties, some of which can hurt your rankings if you’re not careful.
GSC helps identify these errors to ensure your website runs as smoothly as possible – but what does each error mean?
Key Google Search Console Errors Explained
Redirect Errors
One redirect and you’re fine, two and things could start to get a bit messy. Three? Chaos. While redirecting some of your website pages isn’t usually a problem, occasionally things can get a little confusing.
Google Search Console will pick up Redirect Errors if you’ve redirected a URL one too many times. A redirect loop may be created, the redirect chain may be too long, or the URL might be over the max character length.
All these errors mean that bots will give up and not bother crawling the website.
To avoid this, keep track of your redirects and keep them to a minimum where possible.
Server Errors
Server errors can have a negative impact on your ranking and should be on your urgent fix list. But before you can go ahead and fix them, you need to know what you’re dealing with.
Server errors usually mean the server has taken too long to load. Bots only wait for a certain amount of time before giving up, so if you’re seeing a Server 5xx error, this is probably the issue.
Key server errors to look out for are:
- 500, Internal Server Error – technical issues are usually the culprit here. Check the CMS and PHP codes.
- 502, Bad Gateway – WordPress problems could be to blame here, the request to an upstream service is delayed!
- 503, Service Unavailable – your server is either busy or taking a break but should be working again ASAP.
Server errors can be a bit of a pain, but once you’ve determined the issue, you can make moves to get back up and running again.
Noindex
Oops, you forgot you asked Google not to index this one! Noindex means you don’t want Google to crawl and index that page – if it’s an admin page, for example.
Sometimes, a Noindex tag can slip by undetected and can be why you’re getting an error on Google Search Console.
Double-check your tags if certain pages aren’t playing ball!
404 Not Found
The dreaded 404 error. This means the page Google is trying to index no longer exists. While this doesn’t necessarily hurt your ranking, it can impact your SEO (and annoy your website users!) Consider redirecting options to get rid of the error.
Error Busting with WP Fiddly Bits
Errors on your website are inevitable – we all run into them at some point! If Google Search Console has identified errors within your site that need sorting ASAP, WP Fiddly Bits can help.
Please get in touch with our brilliant team – they’ll point you in the right direction!
Alison Rothwell
Alison is the Director and Founder of WP Fiddly Bits, the WordPress Website Maintenance experts, and contributes to the WP Fiddly Bits WordPress blog. She also uses her background in marketing to help clients get found everywhere online.
