GWTs Crawl Errors Report listing Analytics Virtual Page Views as 404s

[David_ODonnell]

Just noticed that Google Webmaster Tools is reporting Google Analytics virtual page views as 404s.

Shouldn't Google's own crawler be configured to recognize and discount URLs in Google Analytics code used to track virtual page views?

Wondering if this is just a short term issue waiting to be addressed by Googs.

[BlueprintMarketing]

I believe I have found the smoking gun. Please let me know if this helps you. if you follow the 2nd link and the 1st link you will see plenty of 404 errors unexplained now that Google has done this update.

http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-tools-revamps-crawl-errors-but-is-it-for-the-better-114892

**Update 3/17/12:**After talking with Google, I’ve learned that most of what I was disappointed to find had been removed and that I feel is useful detail for power users is in fact still available through the API! I’ve dug into the details and have written up my findings. I’ve also updated this story with additional details from Google:

• Access denied errors include 401, 403, and 407. That some of these were showing up as “other” was a bug that has since been fixed.
• Not followed errors are indeed URLs returned either a 301 or 302 and Googlebot had trouble crawling that redirect due to an issue.

Sincerely,

Thomas Von Zickell

Blueprint Marketing

[David_ODonnell]

Thanks, that article does discuss many recent changes in GWT error reporting, but it does not specifically address virtual page views.

[BlueprintMarketing]

How To Track 404 Errors in Google Analytics You don’t want your website visitors coming across your 404 page. It hurts your brand, your conversions, and in some cases your search engine optimization efforts. In order to best treat 404 issues, it’s best to find out 2 things: What URLs are attempting to be accessed? From where are those URLs being linked to? This way you can either 301 redirect a page that is incorrectly being linked to from an outside website or fix a broken link on your own website. How to do it: It’s super simple. In the header template of your 404 page, find this line in your Google Analytics Tracking Code: _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); Then change it as follows: _gaq.push(['_trackPageview','/404error/?url=' + document.location.pathname + document.location.search + '&ref=' + document.referrer]); What’s happening here is we’re creating a virtual pageview that starts with /404error/ (you can name it what you wish) and then appending 2 made-up parameters to help us spot the source of the problem: “url=” will catch the URL which a visitor attempted to access. “ref=” will catch the referring page. Here’s what it will look like in your reports (when you do a search for “404error”): http://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/track-404-errors-in-google-analytics/ I hope this is of more help. All the best, Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi David,

I hope that helped you more if not let me know I am talking to someone that works at Google on Monday.

All the best,

Thomas

[David_ODonnell]

Thanks for following up, but I'm not trying to track 404 errors.

The issue is that a client was using virtual page views on their site to track downloads. However, these virtual pages views were showing up in Google Webmaster Tools as 404s (because the pages do not actually exist, of course).

[mikecp]

That's very odd.

Does the ultimate destination of those clicks 404? Google has gotten better and better at crawling JavaScript, but this isn't your typical JS link.

I wouldn't worry about it, but I'd say it's just a bug.

[David_ODonnell]

Pretty much my attitude, have marked them as fixed in GWT, will see if they return.

[5outhpaw]

My issue is similar, except Google is reporting 404 errors on its own JS tracking code! This bug appears not to be isolated to Google tracking code, as GWT is also reporting 404s for 3rd party scripts on our page that use the _trackPageview call.

I did some digging and found the following excerpt from Do 404's hurt my site? on the Webmaster Central Blog:

"If you see 404s reported in Webmaster Tools for URLs that don’t exist on your site, you can safely ignore them. We don’t know which URLs are important to you vs. which are supposed to 404, so we show you all the 404s we found on your site and let you decide which, if any, require your attention."

Based upon the above info, my plan is to follow suit and mark the 404s as fixed.

By the way ... did your 404s return?

[David_ODonnell]

Yes, they did return, but similar to your thoughts, I'm quite happy to ignore them.

Also from Google, the last sentence is quite topical:

"Generally, 404 errors don’t impact your site’s ranking in Google, and you can safely ignore them. Typically, they are caused by typos, misconfigurations (for example, for links that are automatically generated by a content management system) or by Google’s increased efforts to recognize and crawl links in embedded content such as JavaScript."