KNOWN ISSUE: 410 & 404 deliberate to remove invalid links with Google

1. 76

   melbelposted 12 years ago

   There has been a steady increase in the number of 410 and 404 errors reported in Webmaster Tools since the end of October.
   
   I have a ton of crawl errors, but when I open the url, it's not the url of a hub, but like a messed up version of the url.
   
   Example
   Crawl error for:
   melbel.hubpages.com/hub/home/real-estate/buying-real-estate/Buying-a-Home-in-France
   
   Real url:
   melbel.hubpages.com/hub/Buying-a-Home-in-France
   
   -------------
   
   This is unrelated to my deletion several of my questions. Those haven't shown up in webmaster tools as of yet.

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   1. 94

      ThePracticalMommyposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I'm glad you're asking, Melanie, because I have noticed the same thing. Is it a site-wide problem then?

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   2. 94

      Judi Beeposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Same thing's happening to me - have no idea of it's important or not, but it is escalating in the last few weeks.

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   3. 70

      Matthew Meyerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I'm doing some follow-up on our end to see if this is related to something we did or is an issue in Google's end.
      
      Thanks for taking time to report it.

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      1. 87

         Marisa Wrightposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         It did happen once before Matt - can't find the thread now.

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         1. 51

            janderson99posted 12 years agoin reply to this

            This is it.
            
            http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/105114#post2245818

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   4. 70

      Matthew Meyerposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I found some more info related to the issue you described.
      
      The URLs of this form were never "real" urls, but were used to track traffic by category for Google Analytics.
      
      We stopped using URLs in this format and deliberately set them up to return 410 errors so that Google would drop them.

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      1. 51

         janderson99posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         OK, but the number of errors is increasing greatly - I've had more than 200 this month! G is not dropping them. It can't be good for each author's reputation !!!

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         1. 76

            melbelposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            I'm guessing that maybe Google is taking its time checking those urls for content, so it's just lazily adding 404 and 410 pages as they gradually coming across them (which is why they appear to be increasing.) Just my stab in the dark.
            
            In the past it's taken quite a while for Google to drop the 410 and 404 notifications from webmaster tools... unfortunately not one of those "in a day's work" type of things in my experience.

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2. 60

   LindaSmith1posted 12 years ago

   Melbel: I just looked your URL up in Goolge search.  Look at what you show as crawl error.  Think about this: When we do the hubs, and select the category, sub category and maybe even another one. It looks like the dang categories we have to select from are coming up as part of the URL.  HP needs to address these issues to writers, and stop ignoring us.  Stupid part is that writers continue to have issues, yet there are writers who just keep on publishing hubs. I think this is not as much Google as it is with HP.

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3. 76

   melbelposted 12 years ago

   My guess is that perhaps HubPages is either:
   
   -blocking Google from indexing categories
   
   -changed the site architecture in terms of categories
   with Google formerly indexing hubs as a part of their categories:
   hubber.hubpages.com/arts-and-design/interior-design-and-decor/Awesome-Design-Hub
   when they actually belong on their very own url:
   hubber.hubpages.com/Awesome-Design-Hub
   
   A 404 ain't gonna' hurt ya', Google eventually works them out. I just wanted to alert HP of the fact that we're getting a bunch of these status codes in case this is something unintended.

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   1. 72

      Kris Heeterposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I've seen these error pages more frequently (in just the last few weeks) too on other sites like yahoo and others.

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4. 87

   Marisa Wrightposted 12 years ago

   This happened once before and was fixed.  Looks like they've changed something and it's happening again.

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5. 61

   LauraGSpeaksposted 12 years ago

   Melbel, yes I have the exact same thing going on.  LindaSmith1, I too have numerous crawl errors with URLs that look like categories of my hub.  How do we alert Hubpages to this issue, or Marisa, has it already been brought to their attention?

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   1. 76

      melbelposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      They'll see this forum thread.

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6. 49

   Writer Foxposted 12 years ago

   I started noticing this in September.  Every day, different Hubs showed the errors.  That's when I started moving my content to other sites.  (And no, none of my Hubs were in zZz land.)

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