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There are many annoying Site Errors when I'm checking my Search Console at "Crawl > Crawl Errors". Here is a screenshot:

enter image description here

Those links are totally made up and I am never including them in my sitemap, nor linking from other pages.

How can I fix them? How can I tell Google to stop wasting time with them?

Thanks!

update1:

When I clicked the URLs for more details (to see what pages are linking to them), I saw normal/valid pages but I can't find the (listed broken) links on them in the source code (even with all JavaScript executed). And I had never put those broken links on them ever in my previous versions.

Update2:

All of these are happening after I switched from HTTP to HTTPS in late Sep. But I am sure I've handled everything well.

Update3:

I just checked my http property (which I haven't checked for months) and noticed that there were also errors before the switching. So it's not about the HTTP > HTTPS change.

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  • Where does Google think those URLs are being linked from?
    – MrWhite
    Dec 22, 2016 at 10:47
  • When I clicked them for more details (to see what pages are linking to them), I got some normal/valid pages but I can't find the (listed broken) links on them in the source code (even with all JavaScript executed). And I never had put those broken links on them ever.
    – AGamePlayer
    Dec 22, 2016 at 10:59
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    The first few look like they could be jQuery/JavaScript fragments? It may be that Google is finding - what it thinks are URLs - in your JavaScript (which it can do) and attempting to crawl them? This itself isn't necessarily bad, unless it's preventing the real URLs from being crawled.
    – MrWhite
    Dec 22, 2016 at 11:00
  • My search rankings dropped like a falling rocket (Every language, every keyword, hurts a lot). And I am doing every search. I don't know whether those errors would affect it.
    – AGamePlayer
    Dec 22, 2016 at 11:03
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    If the linking page of your javascript has something like var s = "${quiz.s}/fr/" in it, Google scans it and think that looks enough like a URL that it will try to follow it. Such errors won't cause any problems with your rankings, however. If you don't recognize that JavaScript code, it seems likely that your site was hacked. In that case, something is serving bogus data to Googlebot. That would also explain the ranking drops.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Dec 22, 2016 at 11:12

1 Answer 1

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Googlebot reads your source code trying to find URLs that it may miss by looking just at the rendered page. For example, Googlebot will read strings in JavaScript on your page, and may interpret strings as URLs, attempting to crawl them.

$%7Bquiz.s%7D/en/ is likely from ${quiz.s}/fr/, which looks like ES6 template literals holding a placeholder of quiz.s, such as f`${quiz.s}/fr/`. It seems Googlebot is interpreting this as a potential URL, crawling it, and when it returns 404, adding it to the errors list.

There's nothing you need to do here if you recognise the JavaScript. Note that the JavaScript doesn't have to be on the page or even end up on the page — if it executes because of the page Googlebot will still generally find it. If not it could be an indication of a hacked site.

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  • I see. Thanks for the info. I didn't quite catch you on "if it executes because of the page Googlebot will still generally find it. If not it could be an indication of a hacked site." What does that mean?
    – AGamePlayer
    Dec 22, 2016 at 12:12

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