: What could make Google search strange URL in Google Webmaster Tools? In my Webmaster Tools console I can see that Google tries to access very strange URLs, receiving a 404. For example: http://www.example.com/vacanze-hotel.ht
In my Webmaster Tools console I can see that Google tries to access very strange URLs, receiving a 404.
For example: www.example.com/vacanze-hotel.html/vacanze-parchi/vacanze-sicilia-villaggi/vacanze-offerte/vacanze-parchi/vacanze-toscana-villaggi/vacanze-piemonte-villaggi/vacanze-liguria-villaggi/vacanze-marche-villaggi/vacanze-emilia-romagna-villaggi/vacanze-basilicata-villaggi/vacanze-campania-villaggi/
It's a very long URL indeed! and it's not listed in any sitemap.xml, or linked from anywhere in my site (I suppose! it's a very big site)
What could make Google search that strange URL?
More posts by @Holmes151
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I have noticed these kinds of things before for mys sites as well. Do not rely on Google WMT as the be all end all list of inbound links. Do check your own link structure and site to make sure you do not have a mistake. If all appears okay, then something else is going on.
Here is what I figured out.
Content spammers still exists in Russia, Poland, and China, amongst others. If Google sees a link, it will queue it to to follow. These content spammers use software that will do strange things like make links such as yours. I have seen similar requests for my site. It was a result of a spam site in Russia with strange links. I would just let it 404 error if there is not harm in it. Google will figure out the link is invalid in time. These spam sites change so often that more of these types of links may appear, but the sites disappear as quickly as they appeared. They tend to be hit and run sites. If there is no harm, just let it be and don't worry about it. Otherwise you may need to create some sort of intercepting regex in your .htaccess file (assuming Apache) and handle the bad requests as you find them.
"I can see that Google tries to access very strange URLs" << Where do you see this? In the Not Found crawl errors? If so, you should definitely be able to see which page links to them.
View the source code to see if you can find these broken links, or even a part of the links (such as "vacanze-hotel") because they might be being generated dynamically.
You'd better not convert it to a 200 if it's not being linked to from anywhere.
It is linked to somewhere otherwise Google wouldn't be visiting it. Looks like a configuration problem somewhere on your website. Just because you can't see the link doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I'd suggest crawling your site with Screaming Frog to identify what is linking to this URL or if it appears in Google Webmaster Tools, it will also display what pages link to the URL.
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