How to Fix Errors in the Google Search Console

Google does not like websites that have lots of technical issues and errors.

Search engines like google regularly keep track of your website’s errors and warnings. 

Google bot will crawl your website and report the errors in the google search console.

Your website rankings could go down if you have lots of technical issues on the website.

Usually, the most common types of indexing errors reported in the search console are 404 URL not found error and redirect errors. 

Along with that AMP issues and mobile usability issues of the website are also reported in the search console.

In the worst case, these technical issues can lead to the complete deindexing of your web page from the google search results.

According to backlinko, having lesser errors in the google search console could boost the rankings of a website.

Because Google always thinks about the user or your readers first. 

If a website has a lot of broken links then Google will flag it and might even give an algorithmic penalty.

The same is the case when the reader cannot easily scan your content properly on his mobile device. 

It just suggests google that the website might not be suitable for mobile usage. 

Eventually, that could lead to a drop in rankings of the website on mobile search results.

Hence, it is very crucial to fix the technical errors of the website as soon as you can.

Thankfully google search console gives useful information about the indexing issues and technical issues of the website.

In the coverage reports, all the indexing errors and warnings could be easily analyzed.

The best thing about this feature is that it identifies the errors associated with specific web pages. 

And at the same, it gives a hint about what needs to be done to fix the error.

So, once you get inside your coverage reports you will find 4 different sections namely errors, warnings, valid and excluded.

Now our interest in this post will be on the errors and warnings section. 

Because that is where the issues of the web page get reported. 

Click on the error & warning section.

Now a new graph loads which give you an overview and insights of your website technical errors in the google search console.  

It shows the total number of errors and the date and time period associated with those active errors.

For example, in my search console coverage reports I could see that my website had some technical errors and issues from February 16 to February 22.

Breakdown of the errors in the Google Search Console reports:

Scroll down to see more details about the errors.

You will now find a breakdown of all those errors associated with the website.

For example, I recently had a redirect error on my website. 

I found the exact page which contained the error by just clicking on the “redirect error” inside the “details” section.

Once I came to know the faulty URL I used my redirection plugin from the backend of my dashboard.

And I permanently redirected those broken URLs to the proper relevant pages.

Basically I was able to fix that by carefully going through the information given by these reports.

Currently, I’m also working towards fixing some warnings related to indexing issues. 

To find the exact post URL/page URL  associated with the error you just need to click on the particular listing under the error status or error type

So, just to demonstrate the steps to my readers, I just clicked on the warning type “indexed though not blocked by rorbots.Txt”.

After clicking on that particular warning I was able to find that my Bluehost & HostGator custom recommended affiliate URLs had some kind of technical issues. 

It seems like those URLs have been indexed by google even though my robots.Txt suggested had blocked the google bot from indexing those particular recommended affiliate related URLs.

Similarly, you could see the particular URLs of your website which contain the errors.

If you learn how to start a blog on WordPress then you could actually use suitable plugins to resolve technical issues.

For example, with the help of the redirection plugin, I was able to fix my redirection error.

I properly redirected the 404 broken links to the relevant blog posts and pages on my website.

To see the AMP errors of your website you will need to do the following:

• Click on enhancements in your search console.
• And then you should select AMP.

This would show all the invalid error AMP pages. 

Along with that, you could see the valid AMP pages of your website as well.

Similarly, when you click on mobile usability you can find web pages that have issues like improper mobile viewport, text too small to read on the mobile device, etc.

Since I regularly focus on having a clean website I’m unable to show you AMP/mobile related errors in the google search console 🙂 🙂 

But if your website has AMP or mobile related issue then you could just perform the above steps and resolve the issues.

The logic always remains the same.

In the past many times, I have fixed my website AMP related issues by swiftly modifying the settings of my Accelerate Mobile Pages plugin from the dashboard.

You could also use tools like Screaming Frog to get better insights about the technical issues of your website. The tool would crawl your website just like the way Google does. 

And it gives you useful information about various things like site structure, blocked pages, meta tags, broken link paths, etc.

After fixing the technical fault you will have to validate them with your google search console.

To validate the error follow the below steps:

• Inside the error details section, click on the particular error which you wish to validate

• Next click on start new validation

Now your validation will be moved to pending status.

If you had properly fixed the error then the search console will send you a notification indicating that the validation for the specific issue has been passed.

Also, you could think of testing the URL and submit a new indexing request to google.

Submitting the sitemaps after doing any changes to your website is also considered a good practice.

Conclusion:

Many of the times technical errors could be created unintentionally without our knowledge. 

Hence, it is crucial to regularly check error reports of the search console and fix the issues swiftly.

Fixing those errors in the google search console will improve the SEO performance and user experience of the website.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Please do share it with your friends on social media channels.

Thanks.