Turn On or Tune Out – Receive Google’s Webmaster Tools Crawl Error Alerts

Earlier this month, in association with the new Google Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors feature, Google Webmaster Tools rolled out Crawl Error Alerts. Google regularly indexes a website, so they know at times when a site is experiencing connectivity issues, spikes in HTTP error response codes, time outs, or systemic errors. The new Webmaster Tools Crawl Errors feature is tracking these issues. The alert feature notifies the Webmaster Message Center and any email address associated with the Google Account of the alert (when turned on). The crawl errors are divided into two categories: Site Errors and URL Errors. Site Errors are site-wide global problems (e.g. robots.txt inaccessibility, the web server is down, refusing connection, or the firewall is off). If your website is well operated, in theory Site Error Alerts should rarely occur. URL Errors are potentially less critical issues (e.g. Server error, Soft 404, Access denied, Not found or Not followed). Google will only send alerts when they detect a large spike of these issues. Below is an example of an URL Error alert we received: As mentioned previously, Google provides the alerts to be forwarded to any email address associated with the Google Account. To turn on Message Forwarding (off by default), view Webmaster Tools – Preferences. To associate additional email addresses to the Webmaster Tools account, an email address can be added.