: 404 crawl errors in google webmaster tools - odd url's that don't belong to us If anyone can help, I'd be very grateful! We're getting strange domains coming up in Google webmaster tools. When

Posted in: #CrawlErrors #GoogleSearchConsole #Seo

If anyone can help, I'd be very grateful! We're getting strange domains coming up in Google webmaster tools. When I look where the links are coming from, it's either:

non-existent pages on our website (usually) or
some other site URL

I'll give some examples:

Designer--Housewares.html?node=69&rattr=API3_CATEGORY_73188
Designer--Fragrances.html?node=92&rattr=22082753_women-7_7_9_oz_205_234_ml
Designer--Fragrances.html?node=96392&rattr=store_unbeatablesale_inc_9689
Designer--Fragrances.html?node=0&rattr=price_range_96_189-store_ebay_4134392
Designer--Fragrances.html?node=0&rattr=store_amazon_marketplace_9689-22082752_unisex
Designer--Fragrances.html?node=96392&rattr=store_wayside_gardens_9689
Designer--Handbags.html?node=96668&rattr=price_range_917_1825
Designer--Handbags.html?node=31515&rattr=store_amazon
Designer--Fragrances.html?node=0&rattr=store_darkdesirelotion_com
Designer--Fragrances.html?node=0&rattr=store_amazon-API3_CATEGORY_206
Designer--Fragrances.html?node=92&rattr=22082753_women-4_4_9_oz_117_145_ml
Designer-Brands.html

I've never seen these till they turned up in Google tools, and they're certainly not on our website. We never have sold or advertised on Amazon or any of these sites, and we don't sell fragrances.

Some things to help:

Our site is on Shopify.com and domain was registered on Godaddy.com - we don't have access to anything on Shopify.com such as robots.txt or htaccess just to the template design and even that has limitations. We have apps we downloaded from their app store but they are well known reviewed apps.

I cannot figure out where these are coming from but they are causing 404's and i'm worried if more come up, I hope not ...

Can anyone here figure this out because so far Shopify has no feedback or clue.

Thanks in advance.

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@LarsenBagley505

check your html code. Some bad people may have injected these links in your code. They will be invisible when viewing the page but they're buried in the code

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@Ann8826881

We get these questions a lot!!

Make sure you have not created these links by accident by doing an audit.

You can use ScreamingFrog or SEO Powersuite for this. You can use both in trial mode. ScreamingFrog will report on 500 pages in trial mode and SEO Powersuite will spider all pages and report on 1/3rd. You can opt to purchase a license too. Both are affordable depending upon your budget.

You just want to make sure that you are not making these links without realizing it. It happens sometimes. Also check to make sure any sitemap you create is correct. I do not have a tool recommendation for this. I suggest a fast edit and possibly a search if the files are large.

If you are sure that you are not making these links then there is nothing for you to do.

Do not Mark as Fixed any 404 error where the page does not exist. This is Google reporting a correct scenario. If you Mark as Fixed, you are saying to Google that the pages should exist and that you have made them available and to try again. You will enter into a never-ending scenario.

Site scrapers will make strange links from time to time. You should expect it. It does not happen terribly often, but often enough.

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: 404 crawl errors in google webmaster tools - odd url's that don't belong to us If anyone can help, I'd be very grateful! We're getting strange domains coming up in Google webmaster tools. When

More posts by @Heady270

: Does Google now factor the prominence of how a link is rendered into their PageRank algorithm? Google's John Mueller now says that Googlebot renders the pages it crawls to determine what content

: How do I change my IP address so that it would reflect that I am located in a specific state inside the US? I would like to know the best method of changing my IP address to show that

: Is it OK to give status 404 to unauthorized users? In recent months I have come across several sites, which give a 404 status/error page, when there should be 403 or maybe 401. For example,

: In Google Analytics, how do I figure out which domain is referring to our website the most? Under the Referral Traffic tab, I get to see a list of which domains are most responsible for referral

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