500 errors during crawl

Hi,

Does anyone have any info on what happens if your server throws up a 500
error whilst being crawled by the big guys? Are there penalties if a SE
encounters . . lots?

Thanks!

Emme

Emme wrote:

Hi,

Does anyone have any info on what happens if your server throws up a 500
error whilst being crawled by the big guys? Are there penalties if a SE
encounters . . lots?

My best guess, assuming you have inbound links: nothing. You might get
crawled slower and slower, but real penalties (like a ban), I doubt it.

I assume that the 500 was temporary.

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

Emme wrote:

Hi,

Does anyone have any info on what happens if your server throws up a
500
error whilst being crawled by the big guys? Are there penalties if a SE
encounters . . lots?

Thanks!

Emme

Google and even more often MSN will occasionally index a 500 or 404 error
pages, especially customized ones. But there is really no point in doing
that: nobody in the right mind is going to click on the link. I don't
think the rest of your pages will get penalized for few error pages here
and there.


Sincerely,
Dmitri
http://www.1-script.com/install/
Check out my CGI scripts installation offer
-------------------------------------



##-----------------------------------------------#
Article posted with Web Developer's USENET Archiv
http://www.1-script.com/forum
no-spam read and post WWW interface to your favorite newsgroup -
alt.internet.search-engines - 8075 messages and counting
##-----------------------------------------------##

www.1-script.com wrote:

Emme wrote:

Hi,

Does anyone have any info on what happens if your server throws up a
500
error whilst being crawled by the big guys? Are there penalties if a SE
encounters . . lots?

Thanks!

Emme

Google and even more often MSN will occasionally index a 500 or 404 error
pages, especially customized ones.

I would say: only customized ones that return *not* a 500 or 404 status
code, but 200 (or some other OKish code).

But there is really no point in doing
that: nobody in the right mind is going to click on the link.

Depends what is in the custom error message :-)

--
John Perl SEO tools: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Experienced (web) developer: http://castleamber.com/
Get a SEO report of your site for just 100 USD:
http://johnbokma.com/websitedesign/seo-expert-help.html

"John Bokma" <john (AT) castleamber (DOT) com> wrote

www.1-script.com wrote:

Emme wrote:

Hi,

Does anyone have any info on what happens if your server throws up a
500
error whilst being crawled by the big guys? Are there penalties if a SE
encounters . . lots?

Thanks!

Emme

Google and even more often MSN will occasionally index a 500 or 404
error
pages, especially customized ones.

I would say: only customized ones that return *not* a 500 or 404 status
code, but 200 (or some other OKish code).

Yeah I've seen that before and agree, although it's an error page, the
status in the header must be a 200 or similar.

But there is really no point in doing
that: nobody in the right mind is going to click on the link.

Depends what is in the custom error message :-)

Thanks for the info! The 500's are temporary, but I'm working with a site
with huge amounts of database driven content and not super technical staff.
I'm trying to assess how much time to spend with them hand-holding through
the process of reducing the number of errors

Emme.

<snip>