Site errors

If Yandex Webmaster detects issues on your site, they'll appear in Website optimization → Site diagnostics → Errors.

Such errors may lead to the following problems:

• Individual pages or the entire site will disappear from search results.
• Indexing of the site's pages will slow down or decrease in quality.

Checks are performed daily. We recommend fixing errors as soon as possible so that they don't affect the site's availability or presence in search results.

Below is the list of possible errors and instructions on how to fix them.

Main page returns an error

An error may appear if:

• The page disallows indexing.
• The page redirects somewhere else.
• The hosting security system blocks Yandex's indexing bot.

How to fix

To prevent the site’s home page from returning an error:

1. Check the HTML code of the page: if it contains the noindex directive, remove it.

2. In Yandex Webmaster, go to Indexing → Crawl statistics and check the page response code in the Response code column.

   If the response code differs from 200 OK, check whether the problem is currently present using a server response check.

   When checking the server response, pay attention to the Page content section. If the tool shows the message saying "Missing page content", check your server settings:

   • HTTP header: For example, if Content-length: 0, the indexing bot can't index the page.
   • Page content size: Must be greater than 0 and match the HTTP header.

3. Wait for the indexing bot to crawl your site, or submit the page for reindexing.

Your site will be reindexed within two weeks. When the page returns the 200 OK code and its content is available, the warning in Yandex Webmaster will disappear within a few days.

Failed to connect to the server due to DNS error

Once a day, the indexing bot accesses DNS servers to determine the IP address of the site’s server. If the robot doesn't get the site's IP address, it won't index it. The site won't be added to search results.

How to fix

Troubleshooting depends on the error:

The site is closed for indexing in the robots.txt file

Several times a day, the indexing bot requests the robots.txt file and updates information about it in its database. If the robot receives a disallow directive as a response, the information about the site and its page content won't be updated.

How to fix

Troubleshooting depends on the error:

Security problems or violations detected

How to fix

1. See the description of the violation and recommendations for correcting it.

   List of possible violations

   • SEO texts
   • Unexpected redirection
   • Mimicry
   • Cloaking
   • Unwanted software
   • Social engineering and deception
   • Fraudulent actions
   • Low-value content
   • User behavior simulator

2. Fix the violation and submit the site for reindexing.

Learn more:

• Site security and violations

Slow server response

When the indexing bot crawls your site, it records the average server response time on its pages. If some pages take more than three seconds to load, the bot records this as an error. If the server is slow, indexing may be delayed.

The list of pages is displayed in the error message.

How to fix

Check the server response time.

If the server response is fast when you check it, ignore the error message. The message will disappear the next time the indexing bot crawls your site.

On how to speed up page reindexing by the bot, see How can I add a site to search?.

Invalid SSL certificate settings

An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that provides a secure encrypted connection between a site and a browser using the SSL protocol. The certificate contains information about the domain owner, its validity period, the name of the certification authority, and the public key needed for encryption.

If a site has an SSL certificate, it is indicated in the browser’s address bar with the https prefix or an icon. For example, Yandex Browser uses this icon .

An SSL certificate configuration error occurs in the following cases:

• The certificate has expired.
• The certificate was issued for a different domain or not for all subdomains where it is used. For example, the certificate was issued for the domain example.com but is used for the domain www.example.com.
• The certificate from the certification authority is missing in users' browsers or it has been revoked.
• A self-signed certificate is used.

If there is an SSL certificate configuration error on the site, the browser will show a warning. Typically, users avoid such sites.

How to fix

To fix the error, check the SSL certificate and the server settings. To do this, contact your hosting provider.

The next the time the indexing bot crawls your site, it'll see the changes, and — if there is no error — the error message will disappear in Yandex Webmaster.

Duplicate pages with GET parameters were found

There are duplicate pages on the site with the same content, but the URLs for these pages are different. When crawling your site, the indexing bot records duplicate pages separately from each other or may group them together.

Some links with GET parameters in the URL duplicate the content of pages without GET parameters. For example, https://example.com/tovary?from=mainpage duplicates https://example.com/tovary.

If your website has duplicate pages:

• The page you need may disappear from search results.

  When crawling your site, the indexing bot may select another page from the group of duplicates.

  Sometimes, duplicate pages are not grouped and appear in search results as different documents. Such pages will compete with each other, which will negatively affect your site’s rank in search results.

• The site's address may change depending on which page remains in search results. This makes it difficult to view site statistics in web analytics services.

• The robot may take longer to re-crawl your site. As a result, information about the pages that are important to you is sent to the search engine database more slowly, and the bot creates an additional load on the website.

How to fix

To remove duplicates and let the bot know which page should be included in the search, add the Clean-param directive to robots.txt. The robot won't take into account the parameters in the URL.

Once the error is fixed, the data will be updated within a few days, and the message in Yandex Webmaster will disappear.

#for URLs like:
https://example.com/page?utm_source=link&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=new
    
#robots.txt will contain:
User-agent: Yandex
Clean-param: utm_source&utm_medium&utm_campaign /page
#this way we indicate that the URL that needs to remain in search results should be https://example.com/page
    
#for the directive to apply to pages at any URL, don't specify the URL:
User-agent: Yandex
Clean-param: utm_source&utm_medium&utm_campaign