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5xx Errors

URLs that return any 5xx Server Error HTTP status code, such as a 503, often caused by a temporary server performance problem or a permanent issue.

Priority: Critical

Impact: Negative

What issues it may cause​

If a 503 response is seen by Google, they will consider the URL as temporarily unavailable and keep the URL in the index until it has been recrawled. If the URL consistently returns a 5xx status then it will be removed from search engine's indexes.

If Google discovers a significant number of URLs returning a 503 status, they may think that the site is having performance issues and reduce crawling activity which could reduce the speed of indexing of new URLs.

How do you fix it​

  • If the page is broken accidentally, it can fixed.
  • If the URL is malformed, then any links to the URL can be updated to the correct URL.

  • If the URL is malformed and has backlinks from external websites, the malformed URL could be redirected to the correct URL.

What is the positive impact​

A redirect to an appropriate alternative URL may result in authority signals being transferred to the redirect target, and rankings potentially retained by the redirect target page.

Removing any internal links to pages which return a 5xx status is likely to reduce crawling activity and save crawl budget.

How to fetch the data for this report template​

You will need to run a crawl for report template to generate report. When report has been generated and you have crawl id you can fetch data for the report using the following query:

query GetReportForCrawl($crawlId: ObjectID!, $reportTemplateCode: String!) {
  getCrawl(id: $crawlId) {
    reportsByCode(
      input: {
        reportTypeCodes: Basic
        reportTemplateCodes: [$reportTemplateCode]
      }
    ) {
      rows {
        nodes {
          ... on CrawlUrls {
            pageTitle
            url
            description
            foundAtUrl
            deeprank
            level
            httpStatusCode
            foundInGoogleAnalytics
            foundInGoogleSearchConsole
            foundInBacklinks
            foundInList
            foundInLogSummary
            foundInWebCrawl
            foundInSitemap
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

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