Did you know that Google Webmaster Tools could help you find and fix errors on your web site?  As Google crawl through your web site links, it finds and logs all the errors it encounters.  It then (if you have your domain setup with a Google Webmaster Tools account) will turn around and tell you what the errors are so that you can get them fixed.

How to Troubleshoot Crawl Errors

Log into the Google Webmaster Tools, and then select your web site from the list of those you  setup.  That should take you to the dashboard for that particular web site.

Next, click the Diagnostics link in the left sidebar menu, and then click Crawl Errors.  This will give you all the issues Google has encountered when crawling your web site.

Currently, there are no Unreachable web pages hosted on this site, however you should also check the other error categories they provide to you.  They include:

• HTTP Errors
• Errors in Your Sitemaps
• Not Followed
• Not Found (aka a 404)
• Restricted by robots.txt
• and Pages that Timed Out

Out of the Not found errors, let us take a look at one in particular:

Here it tells you the link that is giving the error, what type of error it is, a link to show you who is linking to this page (leading to the error) and the date Google found it.

I can confirm the page is not there.  So next, I click to see who is linking to this web page.

Since I control both of these links that have the bad link on them, I can correct them, to take care of this bad link issue.  Now my links will be correct, and both web site visitors and Google should no longer find an error there in the future.

Remember that Google will not know you fixed the web page automatically.  You will have to wait for them to re-crawl your web site to find out that the error was fixed.  So, do not freak out if you fix an error and it says you still have one because Google’s error monitoring is not real time.

I hope this helps you get a little more use out of your Google Webmaster Tools account.  It really is a handy resource for several web development issues.