Unknown URLs Generated for non-existing pages

[Gregg]

Hi there,

Google Search Console has been returning multiple site URL errors for pages that don’t exist. These errors began appearing in the Search Console in early October. I’ve included at the end of this email a sample list of the URLs from the latest report. I’ve also attached a screenshot.

When we follow the link displayed in the console for a ‘week’ URLs, this message appears on the page with a blank calendar for the week. “No matching events listed under Community. Please try viewing the full calendar for a complete list of events.”

When we follow the link displayed in the console for a ‘day’ URLs, this message appears: “No matching events listed under Activities scheduled for July 20, 2016. Please try another day.”

There’s nothing listed in events, and I’ve explored the Pro Settings to see if there’s any setting that’s auto-generating these but can’t find anything. And they appear to be random weeks for only one category.

We’ve been creating redirects, but it’s getting to be very time consuming. Here are some examples of URLs that the Search Console is returning. Please help.

LIST OF SAMPLE URL ERRORS
ptownevents.com/events/category/activities/week/2017-04-16
ptownevents.com/events/category/activities/week/2017-07-16
ptownevents.com/events/category/entertainment/week/2017-08-06
ptownevents.com/events/category/activities/week/2017-02-26
ptownevents.com/events/category/art/week/2017-07-16
ptownevents.com/events/category/activities/week/2017-05-14
ptownevents.com/events/category/art/week/2017-05-14
ptownevents.com/events/category/community/week/2017-07-16
ptownevents.com/events/category/activities/2016-07-20/
ptownevents.com/events/category/activities/week/2017-06-04

[Geoff B.]

Hello again Gregg,

Thank you for reaching out to us.

We are sorry to hear about these non-existing URLs creeping up in the Google Search console.
I would love to help you with this topic.

Based on what I am seeing, I would recommend 2 things to see if that helps:

1. Could you update your the Events Calendar Pro to the latest version (it is currently not matching the Events Calendar free – this is know to cause issues) ?
2. Would you mind completely emptying the cache and running the Google Search console again ?

Let me know how that goes.

Best regards,
Geoff B.

[Gregg]

I updated and emptied the cache. I’m not sure what you mean by run the Search Console again. My understanding is that the console reflects what Google finds as crawls it the site. I can re-submit the xml site maps, but the site maps don’t contain these URLs. Can you explain what you mean by run teh Search Console again?

Two other questions:
1. An updated notice didn’t show on my Plug-ins page. Should I be checking for updates myself?
2. The plug-in install failed, but I manually uploaded through FTP. Is there something I’m doing incorrectly that would cause the install through WP to fail?

Thanks for you help.
Gregg

[Geoff B.]

Good evening Gregg,

Thank you for writing back and performing the update.
You are right, I was not clear in my request about the search console.

Indeed, the results from the Google search Console are based on what Google finds as it crawls.

But, as I thought some more about this, I realized even if my theory proved to be true (that this was somehow related to some caching issue), it would take a while to be updated from Google’s crawls.

I would like to ask for a second opinion on this one since this is quite a head scratcher.

Hang in there as I do that for you.

Best regards,

Geoff B.

[Brook]

Howdy Gregg,

Geoff asked me to take a look at this thread because of my familiarity with SEO.

It might come as a surprise, but what Google is showing you here is just informational. It’s not an actual error, it has no impact on SEO, and there is no real way to get rid of it. Google is telling you that this page contains no content, but that there are links to it. Which is true. The page in question is a date range search for the week of ____. And since there are no events there, it has no content.

We have done no small amount of research into this to see if there were ways of getting rid of these. We have even changed the behavior of the calendar, from generating hard 404s (Just like WordPress does elsewhere) to generating soft ones, and no matter what you do Google will show a useless notification. Fortunately though both Google and Matt Cutts have been very explicit in saying these pages have no impact on SEO, so long as noindex is set. Which it is.

So basically you will continue seeing this messages no matter what you do. But don’t worry, they’re harmless.

Do you have any questions or anything I can clarify?

Cheers!

– Brook

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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