Critical Technical SEO
Page could not be fetched
- Severity
- Critical
- Impact
- High
- Effort to fix
- Medium
- Issue code
fetch_error
Why it matters
The server returned no usable response (timeout, DNS, SSL or connection failure). Search engines cannot index what they cannot fetch.
How to fix it
Check server uptime, SSL certificate validity, DNS and firewall or bot protection rules for this URL.
What this means
SiteAud!tLint requested the page and got no usable HTTP response at all: the connection timed out, the domain did not resolve, the SSL certificate failed, or the connection was refused or reset. The evidence shows the exact error.
This is different from an error status code. A 404 or 500 is a response; here the server never answered properly.
Common causes
| Error in the evidence | Usually means |
|---|---|
| Timeout | The server is overloaded or very slow for this URL, or a firewall silently drops the request |
| SSL or certificate error | An expired, self-signed or wrong-domain certificate, or a missing intermediate certificate |
| Name resolution or DNS error | The hostname has no DNS record, such as an old subdomain still linked from the site |
| Connection refused or reset | Nothing is listening on that port, or a firewall or bot protection rejects the crawler |
Why it matters
If SiteAud!tLint cannot fetch a page, search engines usually cannot either. A page that fails for Googlebot is eventually dropped from the index, and visitors with the same problem see a browser error instead of your site.
How to fix it
- Open the URL in a browser. If it works there but not in the crawl, bot protection or a firewall is probably blocking automated requests. Allow the crawler's user agent, or lower Parallel requests and raise Delay between requests in Crawl settings. See About our crawler for what the crawler sends.
- For SSL errors, check the certificate with your host. Expired certificates and missing intermediates are the most common causes.
- For DNS errors, remove or update links to hostnames that no longer exist.
- For timeouts on a few heavy pages, see Slow response.
Verify the fix
Recrawl. If errors disappear with fewer parallel requests, the server was struggling with the request rate. See The audit is incomplete or slow.
How it affects your score
Finding this issue on any page costs the Technical SEO score 8 points, plus up to 25 more depending on the share of crawled pages affected. As a critical issue type it also takes 3 points off overall site health (critical deductions stop at 15 points). Blocks indexing, breaks pages or loses traffic. Fix these first.
Find the affected URLs
Open Crawl > Issues and pick Page could not be fetched. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (high) and effort (medium), and in the issues CSV under the code fetch_error. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.