How to Find and Fix Crawl Errors That Hurt Your Rankings

Crawl errors tell you that search engines tried to access a page on your site and failed. Some crawl errors are harmless — a deleted blog post that never received traffic, for example. Others are actively hurting your rankings by wasting crawl budget, breaking link equity chains, and sending users to dead ends.

The difference between a healthy site and one bleeding organic traffic often comes down to how quickly you identify and resolve the crawl errors that matter. This guide covers each type of crawl error, where to find them, how they impact your SEO, and exactly how to fix them.

What Are Crawl Errors?

A crawl error occurs when a search engine bot (like Googlebot) requests a URL on your site and receives an error response instead of the expected page content. The type of error response tells you what went wrong and points you toward the fix.

Server Errors (5xx)

Server errors mean your web server failed to fulfill a valid request. The most common variants:

500 Internal Server Error. A generic catch-all indicating something broke server-side. Causes range from misconfigured .htaccess files to database connection failures.

502 Bad Gateway. The server acting as a proxy received an invalid response from the upstream server. Common with load balancers and reverse proxy setups.

503 Service Unavailable. The server is temporarily overloaded or under maintenance. Search engines are generally patient with 503s, but persistent ones signal an infrastructure problem.

Why they are dangerous: If Googlebot encounters 5xx errors repeatedly, it will reduce your site's crawl rate — meaning even your healthy pages get crawled less frequently. In severe cases, pages may be dropped from the index entirely.

Not Found Errors (404)

A 404 means the requested URL does not exist on the server. This is the most common crawl error and the one you will encounter on every audit.

Typical causes:

A page was deleted without setting up a redirect

A URL was changed and internal links were not updated

An external site links to a URL that was misspelled or never existed

A CMS generated a temporary URL that was later removed

Not every 404 requires action. A 404 for a page that was intentionally removed and has no backlinks or internal links is working as expected — it tells search engines the page is gone. The 404s that hurt are the ones on pages that still receive links, still appear in sitemaps, or still have users trying to access them.

Access Denied Errors (403)

A 403 Forbidden error means the server understood the request but refuses to authorize it. In a crawl context, this usually means:

Password protection is blocking the crawler

IP-based access restrictions are filtering out bot traffic

File permissions on the server are misconfigured

Fix: Check your server configuration and ensure crawlers are not being blocked by authentication layers or IP restrictions that should only apply to staging or admin areas.

Redirect Errors

Redirect errors encompass several problems:

Redirect chains. URL A redirects to B, which redirects to C, which redirects to D. Each hop adds latency and loses a small percentage of link equity.

Redirect loops. URL A redirects to B, and B redirects back to A. The page becomes completely inaccessible.

Incorrect redirect types. Using 302 (temporary) redirects when 301 (permanent) is appropriate. Search engines may not pass full link equity through 302 redirects.

Rule of thumb: Every URL should reach its final destination in one redirect hop. If your audit shows chains of three or more, flatten them.

Where to Find Crawl Errors

You cannot fix what you do not know about. Here are the two primary sources for discovering crawl errors on your site.

Google Search Console Coverage Report

Google Search Console (GSC) reports crawl errors directly from Googlebot's perspective — making it the most authoritative source for understanding what Google actually encounters.

How to use it:

Open Google Search Console and navigate to the Pages report (formerly Index Coverage).

Review the Why pages aren't indexed section. This groups crawl and indexation issues by type.

Pay attention to these specific categories:

- "Server error (5xx)" — your highest-priority fix

- "Not found (404)" — review for pages that should exist

- "Redirect error" — chains, loops, or broken redirects

- "Blocked by robots.txt" — pages unintentionally blocked

Limitation: GSC only reports errors that Googlebot encountered during its regular crawling. It does not actively crawl every URL — so issues on pages Googlebot has not visited recently may not appear.

Using a Site Audit Tool

A dedicated site audit tool crawls your entire site systematically, catching errors that GSC may miss because Googlebot has not recently visited those pages.

Advantages over GSC alone:

Covers every discoverable URL, not just ones Googlebot happened to crawl

Identifies issues before Googlebot encounters them (proactive vs. reactive)

Provides additional context: which internal links point to error pages, how deep the errors are in the site structure, and whether the same errors appeared in previous audits

When you run a Site Audit in UtilitySEO, crawl errors are categorized by type and severity. You can see exactly which pages link to each error URL, making it straightforward to trace the source of the problem and plan your fix.

For a complete walkthrough of the audit process, see The Complete Guide to Site Audits in 2026.

How Crawl Errors Impact Your SEO

Understanding the mechanisms of damage helps you prioritize which errors to fix first.

Wasted Crawl Budget

Search engines allocate a finite amount of crawling resources to your site — your crawl budget. Every request that returns an error is a request that could have been spent discovering or refreshing a real page.

For small sites (under 10,000 pages), crawl budget is rarely a practical concern. For larger sites — especially ecommerce catalogs, publishers, or sites with dynamic URL parameters — hundreds of error pages can meaningfully reduce how frequently your important content gets crawled.

Example: An ecommerce site with 50,000 products discovered that 8,000 URLs from a discontinued product line were still in their sitemap, all returning 404s. Removing those URLs from the sitemap and adding proper redirects for pages with backlinks freed up crawl budget, and their new product pages started appearing in search results 40% faster.

Lost Link Equity

When an external site links to one of your pages and that page returns a 404, the link equity from that backlink is wasted. It does not pass to any other page on your site — it simply disappears.

How to quantify the damage:

Export your list of 404 URLs from your audit.

Cross-reference with your backlink data (UtilitySEO's Backlink Analysis can help here).

Any 404 page with one or more external backlinks is leaking link equity that you could recover with a 301 redirect.

This is often the highest-ROI fix in an entire audit. A single redirect from a 404 page with strong backlinks can noticeably improve rankings for the redirect target.

Poor User Experience

Users who click a link and land on a 404 page are likely to leave your site. High bounce rates from error pages signal to search engines that your site may not be providing a good experience.

Beyond the SEO signal, it is a trust issue. A site full of broken links feels unmaintained. For B2B companies and agencies where credibility matters, broken pages erode confidence.

How to Fix Each Type of Crawl Error

Now for the practical part. Here is exactly how to resolve each category of crawl error.

Fixing 404 Errors (Redirect or Restore)

Step 1: Categorize your 404s.

Not all 404s deserve the same treatment. Sort them into three groups:

Has backlinks or significant traffic. These need a 301 redirect to the most relevant existing page.

Has internal links pointing to it. Update the internal links to point to the correct URL. A redirect works too, but fixing the source is cleaner.

No links, no traffic, intentionally removed. Leave the 404 in place. This is the correct signal for a page that should not exist.

Step 2: Implement 301 redirects for high-value 404s.

Map each URL to the most relevant existing page. Do not redirect everything to the homepage — that creates a poor experience and search engines may treat mass homepage redirects as soft 404s.

Step 3: Update internal links.

Search your site for links pointing to the 404 URL and update them to point to the redirect target (or the correct page). This eliminates the redirect hop for internal navigation.

Step 4: Remove from sitemaps.

If the 404 URL appears in your XML sitemap, remove it. Sitemaps should only contain URLs that return a 200 status code.

Resolving Server Errors

Server errors require collaboration with your development or hosting team.

Check server logs. The error logs will reveal the specific cause — database timeouts, memory limits, misconfigured rewrites, or failing scripts.

Test the affected URLs directly. Load them in a browser and inspect the response. Is the error consistent or intermittent?

Check hosting resource limits. Shared hosting plans often have CPU or memory limits that cause 503 errors during traffic spikes or heavy crawling.

Review recent deployments. If server errors appeared after a code deploy, the new code likely introduced the problem. Check deployment logs and roll back if necessary.

Cleaning Up Redirect Chains

Map the full chain. For each chain, trace the complete path from the original URL to the final destination.

Update the first redirect. Change the redirect at the origin URL to point directly to the final destination, skipping all intermediate hops.

Update internal links. Any internal link pointing to a URL in the chain should be updated to point directly to the final destination URL.

Test after fixing. Verify the redirect works correctly and that no new chains were introduced.

Handling Soft 404s

A soft 404 occurs when a page returns a 200 status code but displays content that looks like an error page — "No results found," an empty product listing, or a generic "page not available" message.

Google recognizes these and reports them in Search Console. To fix:

If the page should not exist, return a proper 404 or 410 status code.

If the page should exist but is showing empty content, fix the underlying content or data issue.

If the page is a search results page with no results, consider adding a noindex tag rather than allowing it to be indexed as thin content.

Preventing Crawl Errors Going Forward

Fixing existing errors is reactive. Preventing new ones is where the real efficiency gains come from.

Scheduled Audits and Automated Monitoring

Set up recurring site audits to catch new errors within days of their appearance, rather than waiting until they accumulate into a larger problem.

Recommended cadence:

Weekly audits for sites with frequent content updates, product changes, or active development

Biweekly audits for stable sites with moderate update frequency

Post-deployment audits after any significant code or content release

UtilitySEO's scheduled Site Audits run on your configured cadence and send you a digest summarizing new issues. Combined with Uptime Monitoring, you get alerts for server errors in real time — not just when the next audit runs.

Proper Redirect Management During Migrations

Site migrations are the single largest source of crawl errors. Whether you are changing domains, restructuring URLs, or moving to a new CMS, follow these principles:

Map every old URL to its new equivalent before launch. Do not rely on pattern-based redirects alone — they miss edge cases.

Implement 301 redirects for every changed URL. Use a server-side redirect (.htaccess, nginx config, or edge rules), not JavaScript or meta refresh redirects.

Update your XML sitemap to reflect the new URL structure on launch day.

Audit the site within 48 hours of migration. Catch redirect gaps before search engines crawl the broken URLs.

Monitor GSC coverage daily for two weeks post-migration. New crawl errors will surface quickly if redirect coverage is incomplete.

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Crawl errors do not fix themselves, but finding them does not have to be a manual process. Find crawl errors automatically — start a free site audit with UtilitySEO. Connect your site, run a crawl, and get a categorized list of every error with the context you need to prioritize fixes. Start your free audit.