Share Your Funny SEO Mistakes

Dec 18, 2008 - 8:17 am 12 by

I found a fun but serious SEO mistake in a Google Webmaster Help thread that I wanted to share with you all. But I felt it would be fun, if you had the time, to share at least one of your funny, but deadly, SEO mistakes - that you have seen first hand, in the comment section below.

The mistake documented in the thread was that someone was not sure why his Webmaster Tools account was showing the status of "network unreachable" for many of his URLs. JohnMu from Google looked into the issue to explain that although you and I (ordinary users) can see those URLs, for some reason, GoogleBot was being shown a 500 error page. The way John was able to reproduce that was by simply changing his browser's useragent to the same useragent GoogleBot uses, "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)". Then he surfed to the page to be presented with the 500 error.

This is a deadly but sad mistake. Normally people will go out of their way to serve up better optimized pages for GoogleBot. But to serve up error pages to GoogleBot, while serving up your beautiful content only to your users - well, that is kinda anti-SEO. This webmaster's issue had to do with a problem with ASP.net's URL rewriting system he was using and how he set it up.

Your turn, share a quick story below of a funny SEO mistake you have seen.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
Google Core Update Rumbling, Manual Actions FAQs, Core Web Vitals Updates, AI, Bing, Ads & More - YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 18, 2024

Mar 18, 2024 - 4:00 pm
Google Updates

Google Urges Patience As The March 2024 Core Update Continues To Rollout

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google

Official: Google Replaces Perspective Filter With Forums Filter

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Now Offers Additional Review After Appeal Is Denied

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

EU Searchers Complaining About Google Maps Features Changes Related To DMA

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:21 am
Google

Google Showing Fewer Sitelinks Within Search

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google's AdWords Editor 7.0 Has Automated Backup Bug