Google Webmaster Tools 404

I have solved my problem by use an other event plugin.

Thanks for confirming this, Kaehla. Sorry to hear you had to select another product but I hope whatever plugin you ultimately ended with is serving you well. If you ever decide to revisit ours, know that we’re here to help best we can.

Kaehla, Which plug-in did you switch to because I’m seeing the same thing. TONS of 404 errors on dates that do not exist.

/kt

@kttour-360

I use this one: https://www.ads-software.com/support/plugin/event-organiser

We’re very sorry to hear this got to the point where you moved to a different solution. For anyone else though, please check out the workarounds presented here:

https://tri.be/support/forums/topic/webmaster-tools-flooded-with-404s/#post-55393

And note that we are working hard to resolve this in future releases (so that no workarounds will be required).

Thanks!

This is still happening, and the workaround seems to work only temporarily. 404s steadily grow to hundreds as google follows every date in the year!

Sorry to hear that – but can you provide some further details such as examples of the URLs that are still returning 404s?

There are an ever-increasing list, that look much like this:

• {..}/events/2036-03-05/

No events have been entered past this year. 2036?!? ??

I am getting the same thing: {…}/events/2016-01-02/ Google registers this as page not found.

Webmaster tools is registering over 4000 404s and rising. I tried both solutions from the link above and neither one works for me (rats). Google still registers pages as Not Found.

Is there any progress on this? I’m getting ready to use the plugin on a very large site, but sure don’t want all these 404s….

I believe a few more changes have been made with regards to this and should arrive in the next release – that said, they are not going to be a panacea for this issue which, when all is said and done, is not necessarily a problem for everyone and the current behaviour is in fact considered by some to be correct.

However, please know that discussions on the best way to proceed are certainly ongoing and so we may see further developments here over time ??

I appreciate you answering this, but I’m baffled as to why this behavior would be considered correct. I was getting regular warnings from Google and finally simply disabled the plugin.

The system must be creating links to event dates where no events exist. Why have links to blank pages with nonexistent events?

I love your plugin…but I know for some clients who follow their stats religiously this will be a deal breaker.

Hi Glen, you’ve neatly encapsulated the problem there – because for some this is indeed a deal breaker and all I can say is we are keenly aware of that and there is ongoing internal discussion about this.

I appreciate you answering this, but I’m baffled as to why this behavior would be considered correct.

Well, to take a simplified scenario, if you visit a WordPress site and go to example.com/wrong-url then you’re really querying for a page called “Wrong URL”. If that page doesn’t exist a page not found message will typically be displayed and a 404 status header will be returned. Generally most people agree this is correct behaviour.

The parallel is that if you go to example.com/events/2015-10-01/ (but have no events scheduled for 1st October 2015) then your query is again drawing a blank and so a 404 status is correctly being returned. You will see in a thread like this one that most people feel strongly that this shouldn’t happen, but believe me there are also those with strongly opposing views who feel this is how it should be done.

So Google’s correct in listing all these many 404s because in a typical installation they doubtless exist, and, because customers expect to be able to navigate to the next/previous day we are also linking to them. That aspect is what adds an unusual edge to the situation.

The bind, then, is doing things correctly but also offering an acceptable means of working around this that doesn’t impact on site performance adversely as, again, that’s another area that is of high importance for certain segments of the user-base.

All that to say, we’re aware of the problem and everyone’s concerns and certainly have ideas for solutions – but it won’t I’m afraid be an overnight fix.

… Following a further conversation today, I think we should indeed see quite an improvement in the next release, so please stay tuned!

OK. Here is a curious thing: I have two different sites using this plugin, and only one shows up on Webmaster Tools having the abundance of 404s. They have both had the calendar for several months. The one that gets considerably more traffic has more 404s. The other has NONE.

Does this have to do with Google indexing the more popular one more? Or is there some other variable that could help untangle this situation?

Thanks, Barry, I appreciate the reply…truly…..I know you guys have probably thought of everything…but why not:

Just have next and previous go to a day that actually has an event….instead of going to the next or previous day regardless of what it is?