How to Find and Fix Crawl Errors in Google Search Console

If Google cannot crawl your website, it cannot index your pages — and if it cannot index your pages, you will not appear in search results. Crawl errors are one of the most impactful yet frequently ignored technical SEO issues, and Google Search Console gives you a free, authoritative report on exactly which pages are causing problems.

The good news is that most crawl errors fall into a handful of predictable categories, and once you understand what each error means you can resolve the majority of them relatively quickly. This guide walks through how to find crawl errors, what they mean, and how to fix the most common types.

Finding Crawl Errors in Search Console

Log in to Google Search Console and navigate to the Pages report under Indexing in the left-hand menu. This report shows you all the pages Google has discovered and categorises them as either indexed or not indexed. Pages that are not indexed will have a reason listed — these reasons are your crawl and indexation errors.

The Coverage report (in older Search Console interfaces) shows errors, valid pages, warnings, and excluded pages. Focus on the Error tab first — these are pages Google tried to crawl and encountered a problem. Common errors include 404 (not found), server errors (5xx), and redirect errors.

Understanding and Fixing the Most Common Errors

A 404 error means Google found a link to a page that no longer exists. Check whether the page was intentionally removed or accidentally deleted. If the content exists elsewhere on your site, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. If the page is genuinely gone and has no equivalent, consider whether it is worth recreating.

Server errors (5xx) indicate that your server failed to respond properly when Googlebot tried to access the page. These can be caused by server overload, database timeouts, or plugin conflicts on CMS-based sites. If you see clusters of 5xx errors, check your server logs and contact your hosting provider. Redirect errors typically involve redirect chains — too many hops from one URL to another — which should be shortened to a single direct redirect.

Preventing Crawl Errors in Future

Crawl errors are often introduced by site changes — deleting pages, restructuring URLs, or changing permalink structures in a CMS without setting up redirects. Before making any structural URL changes, map out all existing URLs that will be affected and prepare redirect rules in advance. A simple spreadsheet of old URLs and their new destinations will prevent most crawl error problems.

Also check your XML sitemap regularly. Your sitemap should only include URLs that return a 200 status code. Submitting a sitemap full of 404s tells Google that your site is poorly maintained and wastes crawl budget on pages that will never be indexed.