Identify Page Not Found Visits
-
Hello everyone! I have always known enough about Google Analytics and SEO to be dangerous, but was not a focus for me. I am working on a project were I am looking at stuff where my knowledge is limited.
The scenario is that the domain I am looking at will serve a 404 error, but keeps the url, I guess for tracking purposes.
At the same time, there is a page "Page_Not_Found" that has elevated visits.
-
I am not sure how to tell where the visits are coming from to the PNF since the Previous Page is mostly identified as "(entrance)"
-
Is the PNF correlated to the process of serving an error page but not changing the URL?
Ideally, I am looking to identify and improve the 404 visits. I hope that I provided clear enough information. Happy to provide more as needed.
-
-
@cayk I am not sure how to do that, but I might be able to research and ask around. Thank you.
-
@hankhoffmeier Additional to the other replies here, if you can add an image unique to the 404 error, you could get the information you're hunting for server-side by measuring the hits to the image in question. Many server side reporting tools will also allow showing image downloads by URL, which would workaround your core issue that with regard to the 404 URLS themselves.
-
@lynnpatchett Thank you. I tried ScreamingFrog. Where is did help with some items, it did not help me with the overall problem. I will keep researching.
-
@lynnpatchett said in Identify Page Not Found Visits:
If you think you have internal links to 404 pages try https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ - it is a tool to crawl your site and you can filter for your 404s and then see which of your pages the links are on. It is a real timesaver! The free version has some restrictions but should be enough to get you started,
Thank you for the link. That worked for me!
-
@lynnpatchett Thank you. I will take a look at both!
-
@hankhoffmeier Hi, bit of a late reply but try the following:
-
In analytics you can go to the behavior -> site content -> landing page report and the filter for your page not found url (or page title if it is common across 404s). This will give you external sites that are linking to one of your 404 pages.
-
If you think you have internal links to 404 pages try https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/ - it is a tool to crawl your site and you can filter for your 404s and then see which of your pages the links are on. It is a real timesaver! The free version has some restrictions but should be enough to get you started,
Hope it helps!
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved How does Moz compile the "Important pages on your site are returning a 4xx error!" report?
I have over 200 links in this report (mostly from a staging site). I have deleted that staging site and I cannot find the reference to the other links. So my question is, where is Moz finding these links?
Moz Pro | | nomad_blogger0 -
Would You Redirect a Page if the Parent Page was Redirected?
Hi everyone! Let's use this as an example URL: https://www.example.com/marvel/avengers/hulk/ We have done a 301 redirect for the "Avengers" page to another page on the site. Sibling pages of the "Hulk" page live off "marvel" now (ex: /marvel/thor/ and /marvel/iron-man/). Is there any benefit in doing a 301 for the "Hulk" page to live at /marvel/hulk/ like it's sibling pages? Is there any harm long-term in leaving the "Hulk" page under a permanently redirected page? Thank you! Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amag0 -
Magento 1.9 SEO. I have product pages with identical On Page SEO score in the 90's. Some pull up Google page 1 some won't pull up at all. I am searching for the exact title on that page.
I have a website built on Magento 1.9. There are approximately 290,000 part numbers on the site. I am sampling Google SERP results. About 20% of the keywords show up on page 1 position 5 thru 10. 80% don't show up at all. When I do a MOZ page score I get high 80's to 90's. A page score of 89 on one part # may show up on page one, An identical page score on a different part # can't be found on Google. I am searching for the exact part # in the page title. Any thoughts on what may be going on? This seems to me like a Magento SEO issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CTOPDS0 -
How to identify number of internal links to page?
Hi Guys, Besides OSE & screaming frog - are there any tools which can check internal links to a page? I know ahrefs, majestic cannot. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wozniak650 -
Part of Page with Highest Viewership
Just got my newlsetter from LinkedIn with a link to an interesting article about the part of a webpage that gets the most viewership. Are there any page tools out there that will tell me the pixel measurements on a page as shown in the article?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
What do you do with the page of a product that has been deleted?
As anyone know with an ecommerce website, products are constantly being added and removed. Once products are removed, the corresponding product pages are not reachable. Currently, I am redirecting to the Search page, if a product page is reached, whose corresponding product has been deleted. I am not sure if that is the correct, recommended technique from a SEO perspective. Should I try to show related products on the redirected page? Does anyone here know what is the best thing to do with this product page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amitramani0 -
Website stuck on the second page
Hi there Can you please help me. I did some link building and worked with website last couple of months and rank got better but all keywords are on the second page, some of them are 11th and 12th. Is there anything I did wrong and google dont allow the website on the first page? Or should I just go on. It just looks strange keywords are on the second page for 2 weeks and not going to the first page for any single day. The website is quite old, around 10 years. Anyone knows what it is or where I can read about it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fleetway0 -
Canonical category pages
A couple of years ago I used to receive a lot of traffic via my category pages but now I don't receive as much, in the past year I've modified the category pages to canonical. I have 15 genres for the category pages, other than the most recent sorting there is no sorting available for the users on the cat pages, a recent image link added can over time drop off to page 2 of the category page, for example mysite.com/cat-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-23. New image link can drop off to page 2. mysite.com/dog-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-53. New image link can drop off to page 2. mysite.com/turtle-page1.html = 100 image links per page with numbered page navigation, number of cat pages 1-2. New image link can drop off to page 2. Now on the first page (eg mysite.com/cat-page1.html) I've set this up to rel= canonical = mysite.com/cat-page1.html One thing that I have noticed is the unique popup short description tooltips that I have on the image links only appears in google for the first pages of each category page, it seems to ignore the other pages. In view of this am I right in applying canonical ref or just treating it as normal pages.? thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Flapjack0