5 Crawl Errors on Large Websites (+ How to Fix Them Easily)

Crawl errors occur when a search bot fails to efficiently analyze a website’s content and rank it appropriately in the search results. This can lead to poor rankings and suboptimal user experience leading to decreased traffic and sales.

Large websites can run a higher risk of having these search engine optimization (SEO) errors, and to a greater extent compared to their smaller counterparts, due to their sheer size and complexity. 

E-commerce sites and popular publications, for example, have tens of thousands of pages which makes it tedious for teams to maintain them.

Consequently, with time, there will be many pages with misconfigurations and unaddressed areas of improvement that can affect their performance and usefulness for the audience,  leading to lower rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Teams need to adopt specialized software like SEO crawlers and site auditors to discover these issues quickly and address them in a structured manner, depending on the type of error and its importance.

In this article, let’s look at five crawl errors that large websites may face and how to resolve them in three easy steps.

5 Common Crawl Errors on Large Websites

There are five key crawl errors that can significantly impair the search bots’ abilities to analyze and index a large website with complex architecture and heavy content pages.

1. Server Errors (5xx)

The servers (cloud drives) that host the site’s content may fail to process a user’s request such as opening a page or making a purchase due to 5xx errors. These errors can occur due to server downtime, misconfigurations, and overload.

Large websites can be more prone to these issues as there are too many moving parts (types of content, number of pages, etc.) on them. Moreover, these sites usually get a lot of traffic which can overwhelm the servers.

Server errors prevent search engines from seeing the content on a website, leading to poor rankings or even removal from the index. Not to mention, they also sour up the user experience which can further reduce organic visibility for the relevant keywords.

2. Not Found Errors (404)

A visitor experiences a 404 error when they enter a wrong web address, which either never existed or got deleted without a redirect. Commonly, it is the latter, when content is moved to a different page or removed altogether but the webmasters forgot to point the old URL to a new live page.

As we mentioned earlier, large websites have lots of pages, which makes it easier for these oversights to pop up all over. It is possible that teams themselves might be surprised to find out how many dead pages (that throw up 404 errors) are actively referenced on their own website!

After encountering a 404 error, it is quite plausible that the visitor will leave to never return and could share their experience at other places. Search engines interpret this as a poorly maintained site which hurts the rankings and the overall domain authority.

3. Redirect Chains

A redirect points one web address or URL (that no longer exists) to a new and updated one.

Opening up such a page usually takes longer as the server passes on the user’s request to a new address. Teams often avoid internal redirects altogether to ensure their platform provides a fast browsing experience to their audience.

However, it can be difficult to thoroughly keep a large website free from redirects or, much worse, redirect chains. Redirect chains, as you may imagine, are a bunch of redirects strung together. The user bounces from one URL to another until they get to the final content.

Both individual redirects and redirect chains reduce the crawl efficiency of search engine bots and reduce the page load speed drastically. Too many of them can increase bounce rates and visitor churn.

4. Access Denied Error (403)

This happens when private pages are indexed by the search engines but still aren’t accessible by the visitors due to insufficient audience. There can be pages, for instance, that can be accessed when the user logs into the CDN and has the relevant permissions.

When there are tens of thousands of pages, as in large websites, managing permissions and ensuring that private pages are deindexed can be tiresome. The situation can get more complicated if there are multiple stakeholders with varied permission grants.

The search engine bots will spend a part of the allocated crawl budget on these private pages which can prevent other public pages from proper analysis and appropriate indexing. This can reduce the visibility of certain crucial pages, making it difficult for your audience to find the information they need.

5. DNS Errors

When the servers fail to translate the domain name into an IP address, it halts access to the website and everything in it resulting in a domain name system (DNS) error. Oversights such as domain name expiration and misconfigurations or incompatibilities in DNS settings can lead to this.

Similar to the server errors (5xx) we discussed above, DNS errors also prevent search engine bots from seeing the entire website. If not addressed quickly and decisively, this can affect the site’s reputation and get the address permanently deindexed from the search engines.

How to Fix Crawl Errors on Large Websites

Teams managing large websites can put the following tips into practice to isolate the crawl errors accurately and keep their pages optimized at all times:

1. Adopt Specialized Tools

It is pretty certain that the likelihood of crawl errors can be higher with large websites considering their complex structures and high volume of content. Leveraging specialized software such as site crawlers and SEO log analyzers can help the teams uncover these issues with efficiency and ease.

These tools can analyze hundreds of pages of a website within a second for the errors we mentioned earlier. With minutes, teams will have detailed reports of their site’s SEO health and the areas of improvement in front of them.

Some of these high-performance tools also come with comprehensive features as well, which can simplify other SEO workflows. Solutions like JetOctopus, Ahrefs, and Semrush can help teams keep an eye on their site’s crawlability, sitemap, core web vitals, and more.

2. Run Audits at Regular Intervals

The web is a living organism. Everything from the information it makes accessible for the users to the rules that govern its operations evolve with technology and the needs of the people. This also means webmasters need to update their site settings and content with time.

A quick and easy way to stay on top of things and proactively spot areas of improvement is by running deep analyses of the website periodically. Fortunately, audit tools that are specifically designed for large and complex sites let users schedule them.

The software will run all kinds of crawl checks on the website and generate a consolidated report for the webmasters. When finished, teams can get notified through an email alert to jump to the maintenance operations without any delay.

3. Build a Maintenance Workflow

Earlier, we briefly touched upon how teams managing large websites need a structured approach to fix the crawl errors quickly and cost-effectively. This can also play a pivotal role in eliminating the chances of repetition of those misconfigurations.

First, after the SEO audit is complete and the report is generated, rank the detected faulty pages based on the number and severity of errors. For instance, a page with multiple broken links takes precedence over one with internal redirects.

Then, proceed to assign pages to various team members to get them fixed based on their impact on traffic and sales. It is a good rule of thumb to target key product pages and high-traffic landing pages.

Wrapping Up

Large websites commonly face five crawl errors: server errors (5xx), not found errors (404), redirect chains, access denied errors (403), and DNS errors. These issues can significantly impact site performance, user experience, and search engine rankings. 

Addressing them promptly and efficiently is crucial for maintaining a healthy website.

To solve these crawl errors, teams can follow three helpful tips: adopt tools that are specially designed to handle large and complex sites, perform in-depth audits regularly to uncover crawl issues, and build a maintenance workflow that structurally approaches the fixes while maintaining efficiency.