6.0.2 Causing Google Crawl Error for admin.ajax.php

I don’t have this error on any of the pages I manage in Search Console. Is there any more info on this, such as exactly what code it is? 4xx can be many things. A link to the affected page would also be interesting.

Google doesn’t give any more detailed information. I’m not the only one. It’s something that started happening with 6.0.2. The fact probably a lot of WordPress sites out there have yet to update to 6.0.2 combined with many WordPress users are probably not signed up with Google Search Console combined with Google can crawl different sites with less frequency doesn’t surprise me there isn’t a flood of inquiries about this yet. It may not have any significant consequence from Google rankings standpoint but my stance is that it’s better to fix it to remove the chance of that happening.

There’s another thread that just got started on it but the title of it in my opinion is not well written as to make people having the issue easily find the right thread, hence why I started a separate thread with a more accurate title description.

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/wordpress-6-0-2-update-gsc-showing-5xx-errors/

The full path of the problem page will be {domain name}/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by consultant1027.

My question about the URL was about YOUR website being affected. Because only then could you look at it and evaluate it.

I can also see this message in Search Console if I manually enter the URL there and query it through Google at that moment. As already mentioned, I don’t see the automated message anywhere.

Using this example, I could now also see that the direct call of this URL without any parameters generates an HTTP status of 400. Something that shouldn’t happen because WordPress doesn’t link the URL without this parameter. The relevant part of the code has existed exactly like this and unchanged for 5 years: https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php#L32

For me, this also explains why it happens with you and not with me (and probably not with many others). Because you probably have a link to this file somewhere on your website without any parameters that Google follows. This is generated either by your theme or a plugin you use. At the moment, I think it’s more likely a plugin that set the link incorrectly due to the WordPress update because the plugin is not compatible with it.

Therefore, once again: without a link to your page, you can’t be helped here.

I am having the same issue. Google console sending a “Blocked due to other 4xx issue” for the …/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

Since I can’t add a screenshot here this is what that page looks like when I put that url in a browser: The admin-ajax.php page returns a white blank page with a 0 in top left corner and nothing else.

I use Enfold theme and this coder is known for having extremely well written, clean code and that theme has been around since 2013. I am doubting the theme being an issue though I understand you never know.

I received the email from google on Aug 31st 2022. I do see a last crawl date on Aug 25th 2022 in console.

The only details I could find were this:
……………………………
? Robots.txt : 0 Errors and 0 Warnings
? Error: HTTPS is invalid and might prevent it from being indexed
Serving a page over HTTPS helps protect your users’ security and privacy.
Details: Crawl failed on Aug 25, 2022, 1:53:09 AM
Crawled as: Googlebot smartphone
Crawl allowed?: Yes
Page fetch: Failed: Blocked due to other 4xx issue
Indexing allowed?: N/A
Issues: HTTPS not evaluated

And this:

Page indexing: Page is not indexed: Blocked due to other 4xx issue
Discovery
Sitemaps: N/A
Referring page: https://purrproject.com/ and https://purrproject.com/newsletter-december-1st-2020/
Crawl
Last crawl: Aug 25, 2022, 1:53:09 AM
Crawled as: Googlebot smartphone
Crawl allowed?: Yes
Page fetch: Failed: Blocked due to other 4xx issue
Indexing allowed?: N/A
Indexing
User-declared canonical: N/A
Google-selected canonical: N/A
……………………………….
I am using Really Simple SSL and the only thing this plugin is warning me about is my locked/unwritable htaccess file and this is normal as I am using BulletProof Security plugin which secures via htaccess and does lock the file.

So I am deactivating the Really Simple SSL 301 redirect that uses htaccess to see if this will fix my issue.

I am also going to see what in the old blog post from 2020 is calling that url

I have a pending crawl verification going in console but to be honest, I don’t quite know what I’m doing here.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by GriffinGraffix.

The simple solution would be to edit or create a Virtual Robots txt file and Disallow crawling the /wp-admin/ folder > https://forum.ait-pro.com/forums/topic/wordpress-robots-txt-wordpress-virtual-robots-txt/#post-6523. Since this only tells google not to crawl pages under the /wp-admin/ folder then it would not affect anything important like scripts that use admin-ajax.php.

This appears to be default behaviour when wp-admin/admin-ajax.php is accessed via the browser. If you open the web dev tools (F12) in chrome and look in the network tab after a page refresh you will see a code 400.

My guess is google search console is the issue here and not WordPress, not sure why Google is trying to index this file though.

More info about admin-ajax.php https://kinsta.com/blog/admin-ajax-php/ here.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 2 months ago by hefin.

I would disagree about the problem being Google Search Console simply from the fact none of my 6.0.1 sites were having the problem. Could Google Search Console been changed about the same time 6.0.2 was released? Not likely.

In any case it’s not a major factor for search implications in my opinion. Just a minor annoyance.

I have already linked above the sources of the WordPress core in which it can be seen that nothing has changed at the relevant point for 5 years. I still think that Google is the cause. Have you addressed this there in the meantime?

Same problem here – waiting for a solution…

Same issue here; getting a slew of notifications from Google Search Console for all my client websites for “indexing issues” of “blocked by robots.txt” for admin-ajax.php.

Worst is, some clients also get the notifications and are asking me why I’m blocking Google from indexing their websites.

Following…my client’s site uses Storefront and the client just got the same notification from Google.

Hi.

We have this issue, too. Last week we updated our website (WP->6.0.2, Plugins and Theme). Now all of a sudden this issue appeared.

I disagree with the solution suggested by AITpro (disallow via robots.txt). According to another discussion google needs to access this very file. That’s why it is specifically set to ALLOW in the robots.txt by default.

Our theme is Hello Elementor.

These are the plugins on our site. Maybe we can find the culprit plugin by comparing.

Disable Emojis (GDPR friendly)	Version 1.7.4 von Ryan Hellyer
Easy WP SMTP	Version 1.5.1 von wpecommerce, alexanderfoxc
Elementor	Version 3.7.8 von Elementor.com
Elementor Pro	Version 3.7.7 von Elementor.com
LiteSpeed Cache	Version 5.2.1 von LiteSpeed Technologies
Matomo Analytics - Ethical Stats. Powerful Insights.	Version 4.11.0 von Matomo
Polylang	Version 3.2.7 von WP SYNTEX (Aktuelle Version: 3.2.8)
Polylang Connect for Elementor	Version 2.3.2 von Creame
Real Cookie Banner	Version 3.1.7 von devowl.io
Redirection	Version 5.3.4 von John Godley
Rename wp-login.php	Version 2.6.0 von Ella van Durpe
UpdraftPlus - Backup/Restore	Version 2.22.23.25 von UpdraftPlus.Com, DavidAnderson
White Label CMS	Version 2.3 von www.videousermanuals.com
wp-Typography	Version 5.8.1 von Peter Putzer
WP Armour - Honeypot Anti Spam	Version 2.0.1 von Dnesscarkey (Aktuelle Version: 2.0.2)
WPB Elementor Addons	Version 1.0.8.6 von wpbean
WP Disable Automatic Updates	Version 1.1 von Daniele De Rosa
WP Job Manager	Version 1.38.0 von Automattic
WP Job Manager - Applications	Version 2.5.4 von Automattic
WP Job Manager - Elementor Connector	Version 2.3 von TinyGiantStudios
Yoast SEO	Version 19.8 von Team Yoast

Bots are deployed to crawl anything and everything. The goal of legitimate bots is to follow hyperlinks and send indexable data back to the database. The purpose of the WP admin-ajax.php file is below. The admin-ajax.php file does not contain indexable data/content. So it does not need to be crawled. If something is using admin-ajax.php to output data/content then bots will find and crawl that outputted data/content.

https://kinsta.com/blog/admin-ajax-php/

What Is the admin-ajax.php File?
The admin-ajax.php file contains all the code for routing Ajax requests on WordPress. Its primary purpose is to establish a connection between the client and the server using Ajax. WordPress uses it to refresh the page’s contents without reloading it, thus making it dynamic and interactive to the users.

@kuhnbnubstahl I have the same problem and I have Hello Elementor too (version 2.6.1). May it be a theme related issue?

Wordpress version is 6.0.2 and the only plugins we share are Disable Emojis, Elementor, Elementor Pro and Matomo.

I am also seeing this issue on some of my sites and I use the Divi theme.