Google has just recently announced via a blog post in its Webmaster Central Blog that is has rolled out new Crawl Error alerts.
“Since
Googlebot regularly visits your site, we know when your site exhibits
connectivity issues or suddenly spikes in pages returning HTTP error
response codes (e.g. 404 File Not Found, 403 Forbidden, 503 Service
Unavailable, etc). If your site is timing out or is exhibiting systemic
errors when accessed by Googlebot, other visitors to your site might be
having the same problem!” Google posted.
So, according to Google, they will send alerts to webmasters or site owners when they see such errors. These
alerts will be in the form of messages in the Webmaster Tools Message
Center that will let you know what they have detected.
Previously, you can only receive
alerts via Webmaster Tools when your site is experiencing some serious
issues. Now, with this latest update, crawl Error alerts will be sent by Google via Webmaster Tools as well as to your email (if you set it up to forward to email) when you get crawl errors.
“Hopefully, given this increased
communication, you can fix potential issues that may otherwise impact
your site’s visitors or your site’s presence in search,” Google further
posted.
Google will now send you alerts for both site wide and page specific issues.
Site Error Alerts for Major Site-Wide Problems
• DNS server is down or misconfigured
• web server itself is firewalled off
• web server is declining connections from Googlebot
• web server is overloaded or down
• robots.txt file of your site is inaccessible
URL Error Alerts for Less Critical Issues
• Server error
• Soft 404
• Access denied
• Not found
• Not followed
This latest update on Google
Webmaster Tools is another great way for webmasters or SEO Experts to
keep them more informed about the state of their site.
