Google News Crawl Errors When Navigation Appears To Be In Body Content

Jan 29, 2015 - 8:14 am 4 by

Google Webmaster ToolsI always find it interesting when Google responds to specific technical issues on web sites. In the latest one I found, Google's Brenna from the Google News team responded in a Google News Help thread as to why a web site was getting "article too long" errors within Google Webmaster Tools Google News crawl error reports.

It is not uncommon to get these errors but you do not want to see that to be 100% of your errors.

Google's Brenna said the issue in this case is that Google thinks the navigation is part of the body content. She wrote:

Upon checking, it looks like the HTML that may be causing this error is that of your theme. It looks like the crawler considers your navigation to be part of the body.

If you look at the specific examples, such as this page, and look at the source code, it does look pretty messy. The site design itself actually looks fine and I am surprised that is Google's response. The article content is found in the source code, it is just that Google is having a hard time distinguishing between the body content and the rest of the content.

Clean source code, clearly in this case, is important.

As a side note, I find it funny that the Google news help page ranks well for its content even though it is in click to expand format.

Forum discussion at Google News Help.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: January 13, 2025

Jan 13, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Maps

Google Map Pin Attack Exploit Fixed

Jan 13, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Search Result Snippets Related Reviews Carousel

Jan 13, 2025 - 7:41 am
Bing Ads

Bing Testing Bold Sponsored Labels

Jan 13, 2025 - 7:31 am
Bing Search

Bing Tests Updated AI Copilot Answer Which Is More Publisher Friendly

Jan 13, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Manual Actions For News & Discover Policy Violations Updated

Jan 13, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Android Material Design Movie Search Is Slick