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.
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.