Google Search Console errors and coverage issues

Understanding the errors and tips for how to resolve

If google search console detects any new index coverage issue on your website, you will receive an email from google. In most cases, these can be fixed and resolved in google search console, although sometimes you will need to login to your Artlogic CMS to the SEO Tools section to resolve these issues. We will explain how to do this later on in the article.

Important: this article is only relevant for clients that have already gone live with their Artlogic website and submitted their sitemap to google search console.

What is Google Search Console? 

Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. 

If you are new to google search console, we would highly recommend navigating the google search console help website for some articles and training videos to get you started.  This is also where the resources for explaining and fixing the search coverage issues can be found: Index Coverage report article, Index Coverage status video training. Please refer to these resources before contacting Artlogic support.

Overview of the index coverage report

Navigate to the coverage page in search console to check any errors or coverage issues listed.The index coverage report summary page can be found when logged into your Google Search Console account in the Coverage section. Login to Google search console > Coverage > Summary page

Here you will learn which of your pages have been indexed and any problems encountered when indexing your site. 

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Errors

Pages with errors won’t appear in google search results, which can sometimes mean a loss in traffic to your website. 

How to check errors

  • In the index coverage page, the error status filter will show the most pressing issues for you to check.
  • Click into one of the example errors listed in ‘Details’ to expand into the error details and to find the affected URLs. 
  • Here you can find the link to learn more about the specific error and how to fix it in the search console help website. You should click on an example URL and inspect it using the URL inspection tool. This will show all of the details available for a specific page. Try both the index URL inspection and test the live URL, as one may differ from the other. Once you understand what needs to be fixed, you have three options: 
  1. Make the required changes in search console yourself
  2. Login to your Artlogic CMS and navigate to SEO Tools to make the required changes yourself (explained in more detail below)
  3. Contact support@artlogic.net if you are unsure of how to resolve the issues yourself

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You can review the common errors in your search console account and read up on the definitions by visiting the search console help website: specific error type descriptions and definitions. 

404 errors

These errors are very common and while they have may have little impact on your SEO, Google will often email you about any 404 error. Some examples include:

'Submitted URL seems to be a Soft 404'

You submitted this page for indexing, but the server returned what seems to be a soft 404. These are normally empty list pages as opposed to proper page not found errors. This could mean that these pages have content at a later date and you therefore should avoid redirecting to those pages. 

Steps for how to resolve

  1.  Inspect the URL in google search console and click on the affected page.
  2. Copy the URL and head to your Artlogic CMS
  3. Find the affected page in your CMS > Pages: Edit and 'Disable' page.
  4. Navigate to your sitemap in SEO Tools (/admin/records/seo_overrides/) and search for the affected page. Next, edit the page and click to remove from sitemap and then save the page. 

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'Submitted URL not found (404)' 

This indicates a non-existent URL for indexing was submitted. 

Steps for how to resolve

  1. First inspect the URL in google search console and click on the affected page. In most cases this ‘Not Found’ message will appear:

    Screenshot_2020-10-06_at_12.59.14.png

  2. Copy the 404 URL and Login to your Artlogic CMS and navigate to the redirects uploader in your SEO Tools (SEO Tools > Upload redirects).

  3. Here you can paste the 404 URL in the ‘Old URL’ column and next you would add the existing page URL that you want to redirect this to in the ‘New URL’ column and save the page. 

    Screenshot_2020-10-06_at_13.05.28.png
Info - Soft 404 errors explained, Further resources

Mobile usability issues

If you receive the below message from Google search console, these messages are almost always incorrect and the error can be easily validated in Google Search Console:

  • Text too small to read
  • Content wider than screen
  • Clickable elements too close together

Steps for how to resolve

  1. Log into your search console and go to your messages to click on this particular message to redirect you to the correct section, in this case, Mobile Usability.

    Screenshot_2020-10-06_at_18.19.31.png
  2. In this section you can click onto the error, for example ‘Text too small to read’, to see the affected URLs.

    Screenshot_2020-10-06_at_18.06.36.png

  3. Next click one of the URLs (e.g the top URL) and in the preview pane on the right select ‘Test live page’

    Screenshot_2020-10-06_at_18.13.03.png

  4. This redirects you to the mobile rendered page and the updated message will typically confirm that this ‘Page is mobile-friendly’. There will normally be an explanation that the page had loading issues when Google crawled the site and therefore it causes errors.

    Screenshot_2020-10-06_at_18.14.02.png

  5. Finally, you can validate the error by going back to the error detail page with all the affected URLs and selecting ‘Validate Fix’. 

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