Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math support, and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
1. It seems that Google hasn’t seen the updated version of your sitemap yet. Kindly follow the guidelines below:
1.1. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp
1.2. Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin in your caching plugin. The cache could be via a plugin or from the server. For plugins or Cloudflare, please follow this article:
https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/
1.3. After that, remove all your sitemaps from your GSC and resubmit only the primary sitemap (sitemap_index.xml).
2. Unfortunately, we have no knowledge of how and why the 404s are generated. We only report them. These cryptic URLs you mentioned might be generated by other malicious bots that is compromising your website’s security.
Looking forward to helping you on this one.
Hi,
thanks for the answer!
I provide another indication that may clear up my 404 error problem.
For example, the last case refers to
a (nonexistent) URL eMATxMc3387fz / s_e-gOPJOOAVee2aeab.guge
and requested by this user-agent “Chrome 102.0.5005.115 | Mozilla / 5.0 (Linux; Android 6.0.1; Nexus 5X Build / MMB29P) AppleWebKit / 537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome / 102.0.5005.115 Mobile Safari / 537.36 (compatible; Googlebot / 2.1; + http: //www.google.com/bot.html) “.
Do I understand well that it is the Google bot?
If so, what could these weird Google bot movements depend on?
Thanks again
Giusy P.
Hello,
That user-agent seems to be a browser rather than a bot. If you are certain that this is a Googblebot, we need to check if that URL is appearing on your website, especially the sitemap. We would like to ask for your website URL for that for us to further check.
Additionally, I would suggest checking this one with your hosting provider as well. If you have a virus scanner, you may conduct a scan of your whole website and see if there’s unwanted activity happening.
Looking forward to hearing back from you.
Thank you.
Hi,
you are very very kind for the reply.
Site URL is https://www.visureclic.it.
One question and excuse my ignorance.
What does it mean that the visit appears to be performed by a browser?
Thanks again
Giusy P.
Hi,
I go back to writing to add this information.
I checked with a security plugin and found that the visits are actually generated by Googlebot IP addresses.
At this point I ask if it is possible to understand why the Google bot invents so many pages that have never existed on my site.
I also verified that Google bot always scans this kind of absurd pages about every 5 minutes.
I have tried to do a lot of research on the web (and not only) but I have not found any explanation and therefore solution.
I’m very concerned cause these constant requests are overloading the server.
Can you give me some indications?
Thanks a lot
Giusy P.
Hello,
If Google is crawling those URLs it’s likely that they are somewhere on the website so we recommend doing a complete site audit with a security plugin and making sure that there’s no malware on the website outputting those sorts of URLs.
In case this is causing an overload of the server you could follow this guide from Google: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/48620?hl=en
This will help limit the crawling of Google and should help reduce the load on the server.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
Hi,
the answer seems very vague and in any case there are no malware, in fact I have already said that I have performed a check with a security plugin.
These are URLs that obviously do not exist, as demonstrated by their construction.
Furthermore, you previously asked me to provide the URL of my site.
What was this personal information for since you didn’t give me any practical answers to solve the problem?
Is it possible that based on your experience there has never been a case similar to mine?
I’m sorry.
Giusy P.
Hello,
We do sometimes encounter this type of issue and usually, the issue is resolved after applying security software or the root cause of the issue is actually coming from a different plugin. But, we can’t know for sure in your case as this will require you to dig deeper into where that unwanted URL is outputting on your website.
I already checked your website and I can’t seem to find any links that lead to said URLs.
I would strongly suggest checking this one with your hosting provider if they can track those URLs.
If that doesn’t help, you may try temporarily disabling some plugins, clear the website cache and see if Google is able to exclude those URLs.
If the issue persists, let us know and we will do our best to track down where those URLs are coming from.
Looking forward to helping you.
Hi Jeremy,
thanks for your precise answer.
The site is hosted on a cloud (Aruba cloud).
Can the tracking you speak of can only be done directly by the hosting provider or, being a cloud, can I inspect it myself?
Are you referring to information other than what I get from log files?
Giusy P.
Hello,
Hosting providers have their own ways of identifying the source of the URL and sometimes, they just offer web scanners to check if your website is being attacked by hackers or malware. In many cases, this could be just spams happening on your website.
Unfortunately, we have no insight on how this would work with your specific hosting service.
Once you contact your hosting provider, you may share the 404 error log for those specific URLs you received.
Looking forward to helping you on this one.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
