Couldn’t fetch error

Hello Robbert,

Thanks for reaching out. We have addressed your concerns below:

SEO Data Optimization
That’s a rare kind of error to encounter during the analysis. Please provide us with screenshots that highlight the issue you are experiencing. You can use any image-sharing service like https://pasteboard.co/, https://snag.gy/, https://imgur.com/, https://snipboard.io/, or even upload the screenshot to your own website. Once you upload it to an image sharing service, please share the link to the image here.

Attachment URLs
When you upload media (an image or video for example) to WordPress, it doesn’t just save the media, it creates an attachment URL for it. These attachment pages are quite empty; they contain the media item and maybe a title if you entered one. Because of that, if you never use these attachment URLs, it’s better to disable them, and redirect them to the media item itself. So, we recommend that you redirect attachment URLs to the attachment itself.

We are sorry that you were affected by the attachment URL bug. However, the aim of the Yoast SEO: Search Index Purge plugin is to purge those attachment URLs from the search index. It only outputs content not found) but and you will receive a message from Google as though it is a 404. Since 410 is in the same overview as a 404, it will be seen as an increase in crawl errors, and Google will email you. Whether 404 or 410, Google will drop those URLs from the search results since these URLs don’t exist at all. These 410s are expected and you do not have to do anything.

Hey Maybellyne,

Thanks for your support.

SEO Data Optimization
I don’t think I need to share an image for this. It’s just an error that shows up after 5 minutes or so. “Error: couldn’t fetch.” The screenshot won’t give you any more information, but if you think it’s needed I can make one.

Attachment URLs
Yes, I know the settings have to be put on ‘yes’, and -like I said- I already did that.

My question was: is this enough or do I have to take further steps (e.g. download the purg plugin or delete the urls via Google Search Console)? You are talking about the purge plugin, but have you read the reviews? Also, Yesterday I’ve tried it, and noticed that the attachment URLs got broken directly whereas they’re still visible in Google. I don’t think this is an desired outcome.

And, could you also reply to my third question about the featured image?

Thanks again!

Thanks for the feedback, Robbert.

SEO Data Optimization
To troubleshoot further, while you’re on the SEO Data Optimization screen, can you please check if there are Javascript errors on your browser’s console? You may follow the steps here: https://yoast.com/help/how-to-find-javascript-errors-with-your-browsers-console/

Attachment URLs
Setting the ‘redirect attachment URLs to the attachment itself’ to ‘yes’ will redirect those attachment URLs that are usually considered as thin content and then 301 redirect it to the actual file (such as that .png or .jpg file). So setting it to ‘Yes’ should be enough. However, we only recommend having the purge plugin only while attachment pages appear in search results for your site; and you should keep it activated for about six months or thereabout. We can assure you the plugin does what it is supposed to do.

You mentioned that the attachment URLs got broken directly whereas they’re still visible in Google. Can you provide some more explanation? When you say ‘broken’, how do you mean?

Featured image
I assume this third question was just added; it’s strange how I could have missed it. To clarify, do you mean that when you define an image to be used for a particular post, this image is not outputted as the og:image? Is the supposed random image being used uploaded somewhere else on your site?

We look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks again!

SEO Data Optimization
No javascript errors. I opened the console and it just says: JQMIGRATE: Migrate is installed, version 3.3.2.

Attachment URLs
The attachment pages are indexed in Google, I can see this in Google Search Console. So, this means they are visible in the search results I guess. But then my question is: what does the purge plugin do what the setting ‘yes’ in your regular plugin doesn’t do?

About the URLs that got broken: I mean that when entering the URL, it says the page doesn’t exist. And, since the URLs are still in the Google search results, I guess this is not desired. If I am wrong, you can tell me.

Featured image
Yes you are right, I’ve added it later :).

And yeah, you got what I mean; the og:image is another one than selected as the featured image. For example is this article: https://www.backpackblog.nl/phnom-penh-ervaringen/ –> you can see the featured image is different than the og:image.

Edit: in another topic I’ve seen you declaring this is a known bug and that your team is working on it. Good to know.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by rl_stine.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by rl_stine.

Thanks for following up.

SEO Data Optimization
Can you please try resetting our indexables in the database tables by following the steps below?

1. Install & activate the?Yoast Test Helper plugin
2. Go to Tools > Yoast Test
3. Locate the Yoast SEO section and click on the ‘Reset indexables tables & migrations’, ‘Reset Prominent words calculation’, and ‘Reset Internal link counter’ buttons. After each click, the page will reload to confirm that each reset was successful. Note: Resetting the optimization doesn’t undo any of the hard work you’ve put into the plugin as the SEO data is also stored in WordPress’ default tables. It’ll just reset the custom Yoast tables that contain the combined data pulled from those default tables.
4. Go to SEO > Tools, and under SEO data, click the “Start SEO data optimization” button to allow Yoast to rescan your?content.

For your site’s health and safety, we recommend creating regular backups of your site and database. This is especially important before making important changes on your website.

Attachment URLs
You mentioned that the attachment pages are already indexed. The purge plugin purges the attachment URLs from the search index. Setting ‘yes’ will redirect those attachment URLs to the actual file.

If you get the error that the page does not exist, this is what is expected! After a while, they will be removed from Google’s index.

Featured image
For that article you shared, the og:image is <meta property="og:image" content="https://www.backpackblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Killing-Fields-Killing-Tree.jpg" />. Unfortunately, I am unable to determine what you set as the featured image for that post. By the way, do you mean that your featured image is in webp format?

Thanks again.

SEO Data Optimization
Done, and it works :).

Attachment URLs
You are right, but the plugin says it could take up to 6 months before Google has deleted the URLs. So that’s my concern, because if the URLs still show up in the search results people get blank pages.

If I don’t use the purge plugin, will Google, eventually, delete the attachment URLs (with a 301 redirect) as well?

Featured image
Yeah, exactly. I’ve set another featured image. And no, the image is in .jpg format.

But, like I said, in another topic here I saw this is a bug in the current Yoast plugin version. So yeah, you might know this?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by rl_stine.

@rl_stine

Attachment URLs

The purpose of the search index purge plugin is to purge attachment URLs out of the search results as fast as possible. Just setting the Yoast SEO attachment URL redirect setting to “Yes” isn’t fast enough. When you do that, you no longer have XML sitemaps or anything else that would make Google crawl those pages, and thus it could take months for Google to remove those URLs.

Featured image

.webp image is currently not supported by Yoast SEO.

Attachment URLs
But still, like I said, blank pages show up in the search index. So, how long will it takes before they’re gone?

Featured image
Did you read my message? I don’t have .webp images.

Hi,

Attachment URLs

The issue with the media attachment URLs was an issue from v7.0 of the Yoast SEO plugin, which was back in 2018. So unless you didn’t update your plugin in the last couple of years and stayed on that version, then the Yoast SEO search index purge plugin shouldn’t be applicable here. You can learn more about it here – https://yoast.com/media-attachment-urls/

If you’ve set the option to ‘yes’ for the redirect image attachment URLs to the attachment itself, it will redirect the thin attachment page URL to the actual image itself. We wouldn’t expect that it would lead to ‘blank pages’, so if you could provide a few URLs where this issue is occurring, it would provide more insight.

Featured image

We’re checking the page source of https://www.backpackblog.nl/phnom-penh-ervaringen/ again and the og:image tag is set to https://www.backpackblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Phnom-Penh-Night-Market.jpg. Is this now the expected image for both the featured image and the Facebook image in the social tab in the Yoast SEO meta box when editing this post?

There are instances when you set a featured image, it doesn’t automatically set it as the og:image, sometimes due to caching, or if it doesn’t meet the (minimum/maximum) file and size requirements – https://yoast.com/help/why-doesnt-facebook-display-an-image/

Thanks for helping.

However, I feel like you don’t read the problems I face.

This is maybe the problem when every time another person is trying to help.

I’ll try one more time.

Attachment URLs
As I mentioned, I know this bug is from 2018. BUT, since I have noticed this only some days ago, I had to change the setting from ‘no’ to ‘yes’ since it was still set on ‘no’.

The blank pages I am talking about ARE occurring when I apply the yoast purge plugin. Only then the attachment pages will be blank (i.e. ‘This page doesn’t exist’).

The plugin says it could take up to 6 months before Google has deleted the URLs. If that’s the case, people will keep seeing these blank pages up til 6 months, which is not desirable.

HOWEVER, like your colleague Suwash said:

“The purpose of the search index purge plugin is to purge attachment URLs out of the search results as fast as possible. Just setting the Yoast SEO attachment URL redirect setting to “Yes” isn’t fast enough. When you do that, you no longer have XML sitemaps or anything else that would make Google crawl those pages, and thus it could take months for Google to remove those URLs.”

So, it seems that I have to activate the plugin?

Featured image
No, this is the wrong image.

Like I mentioned already, in another topic in this forum colleagues of you say that this is a bug on your side. There are loads of topics about this issue.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by rl_stine.

So, can someone help me regarding the attachment URLs?

Hi,

If you install the Yoast SEO Search Index Purge plugin, it will do the following things:

-Every attachment URL will return a 410 status code.
-A static XML sitemap, containing all the attachment URLs on a given site will be created. The post modified date for each of those URLs is the activation date and time of the plugin.

You can learn more about it here – https://yoast.com/media-attachment-urls/

So it isn’t expected that when you activate that plugin, it would load a ‘blank page’. What it should do is load a ‘410’ status code (content deleted) which you can check by using a tool that verifies the HTTP status headers. It should also create a static XML sitemap for the attachment URLs (which you can check that it should be listed under /sitemap_index.xml) and then keep this activated for around 6 months, before removing the plugin (and keeping the setting to ‘yes’ for redirect attachment URLs to the attachment itself).

As for the featured image and og:image discrepancy, for this blog post https://www.backpackblog.nl/phnom-penh-ervaringen/, you confirmed from the last reply of my colleague, Maybellyne, that this URL https://www.backpackblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Killing-Fields-Killing-Tree.jpg is incorrect for the og:image.

But currently, the og:image tag output is https://www.backpackblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Phnom-Penh-Night-Market.jpg, which seems to match the primaryImageOfPage URL schema (which should correspond to what you’ve set as the featured image). So can you confirm this has been addressed and the featured image and og:image are now one and the same?

Thanks for your effort. However, it’s like I’m talking too a wall, because I still haven’t got any answer on my question?

Let’s try again:

About the 410 code: yes I know. This is what I meant with a blank page. It simply says: “this page doesn’t exist.” And yes, this is what we want by using the purge plugin I assume.

However,

I don’t want this 410 pages to be in the search results for 6 months (which you
understand right?).

So, that’s why I am asking if the current 301 redirects (created by setting the redirect settings to “yes” in the Yoast plugin) is enough to make the indexed attachment URLs disappear over time.

I mean, I know it takes a while before Google has deleted these 301 pages. However, not sure if this takes (much) longer than the using the purge plugin (max. 6 months).

Please help me with this issue.

Featured image
https://www.backpackblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Phnom-Penh-Night-Market.jpg is, NOT the image I’ve set as a featured image. The right image is this one: https://www.backpackblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Royal-Palace-Phnom-Penh.jpg

Hi,

If you decide not to use the Yoast Search Index Purge plugin and just use the ‘redirect attachment URL to attachment itself’ in the Yoast SEO plugin, it will create a 301 redirect from the attachment URL to the actual attachment.

So, yes, Google will visit those attachment URLs and see the 301 redirect, and eventually drop them from the search results. However, we cannot give you an exact timeframe of when this will all occur. The search index purge plugin was created so that it would result in a quicker turnaround (with the advised 6 months), but we cannot say for certain what the timeframe would be for just using the redirect attachment URLs to attachment function.

—

Upon rechecking https://www.backpackblog.nl/phnom-penh-ervaringen/ now, we do see the primaryImageOfURL schema is outputting as https://www.backpackblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Royal-Palace-Phnom-Penh.jpg. The og:image tag is still outputting as https://www.backpackblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Phnom-Penh-Night-Market.jpg. You want the open graph image to also be the same as the featured image (https://www.backpackblog.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Royal-Palace-Phnom-Penh.jpg), correct?

Could you attach a screenshot of what image you’ve set under the Facebook section and social tab of the Yoast SEO meta box when editing this particular post? You can use snipboard.io to upload a screenshot and share an image here. This will help us understand and help address this issue further. Please do share that link here. Thank you.

Hi,

This thread has been marked as resolved due to a lack of activity.

You’re always welcome to re-open this topic. Please read this post before opening a new request.

Thanks for understanding!