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Error Pages in SERPs

Pages which have had impressions in Google Organic SERPs, but which return an error status code (e.g. 400, 404, 410, 500, or 501).

Priority: Critical

Impact: Negative

What issues it may cause​

These pages are very likely to be removed from the search engine's indexes and lose any existing traffic.

If a user enters the site on a broken page from a search engine's results page then it's likely to result in a poor user experience and a bounce back to the search results.

How do you fix it​

The pages should be checked in Search Console to confirm they are still indexed and generating search impressions.

If the pages were removed deliberately then they will be removed from the search engine's indexes automatically in time.

If there is an appropriate alternative working page then the URL could be 301 redirected to the alternative URL.

If a 404 status is being used, consider switching to a 410 status which is a stronger indication that the page has been permanently removed and it should be removed from the index more quickly.

What is the positive impact​

If the URL is redirected then there is a chance that the rankings will be inherited by the redirect target, and the search traffic can be maintained.

Crawl budget can be saved and may be used more important pages may be crawled more often, or saved on server costs.

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
            foundAtUrl
            deeprank
            level
            searchConsoleTotalClicks
            searchConsoleTotalImpressions
            httpStatusCode
            indexable
            duplicatePage
            foundInGoogleAnalytics
            foundInGoogleSearchConsole
            foundInBacklinks
            foundInList
            foundInLogSummary
            foundInWebCrawl
            foundInSitemap
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

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