Server error (5xx)
http_5xxShort answer
The server returned 500, 502, 503 or 504 for this page. Google retries for a while, then drops the URL from the index — and its traffic with it — and slows its crawling of the whole host. Find the cause in the server or application log and fix it today.
Why it matters
A 5xx is the server admitting failure. Google treats a short outage gracefully (it comes back later), but a persistent 5xx is read as "this page is gone", and repeated 5xx responses across the host make Googlebot reduce its crawl rate to avoid making things worse. Rankings follow within days. Every day the error stays, more of the page's signals erode.
How Glimana detects it
The crawler records the final status of every fetch; the rule fires for 500 and above. The crawl summary on the Issues page shows the count per crawl; Bing's crawl statistics show whether other crawlers see the same.
How to fix it
- Find the affected pages in Glimana. Open Issues › Server error (5xx). Every affected page is a row; open one to see the evidence Glimana recorded for it (the measured value, the offending element or the target URL). The same list sits on the task card under Tasks, and the page's own detail view under Pages shows its full signals.
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Apply the fix on your platform.
Open the server error log for the exact request. Common causes: a PHP fatal error from a plugin or theme update, exhausted memory or execution time, a database that is down or full, a misconfigured reverse proxy (502/504), or a deliberate 503 from maintenance mode left on.
- Enable
WP_DEBUG_LOGand openwp-content/debug.log, or read the host's error log. - Deactivate the plugin named in the trace (rename its folder over FTP/SFTP if the admin is down).
- Raise
memory_limitif the log says memory exhausted. - If the whole site is 503, check for a maintenance plugin or
.maintenancefile.
5xx on Shopify is almost always an app proxy or a theme section calling a failing external service. Check the Shopify status page, then disable app embeds one at a time.
Alert on 5xx rate in your monitoring; return 503 with
Retry-Afterduring planned maintenance so Google knows it is temporary. - Enable
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Publish and clear caches. Apply the server or CDN change (reload Nginx/Apache, save the Cloudflare rule), purge the cache, then check the live response with
curl -sI https://your-domain/page— the status line and headers you see there are exactly what Glimana and Googlebot get. - Verify in Glimana. Open the task under Tasks and click Mark as done. The affected pages are queued for a verification crawl within a few hours, and the task closes when every one returns 200 (or a deliberate 404/410). If the check still fails, the task returns to New with a note; when it passes, the task is listed under Resolved technical issues on Impact reports. To check sooner, use Re-crawl affected pages on the issue.
How the fix is verified
Affected URLs are re-fetched after you mark the task done; the task closes when every one returns 200 (or a deliberate 404/410).
FAQ
The error only happens sometimes. Is that still a problem?
Intermittent 5xx is exactly what Google's crawl-rate logic reacts to. The Bing crawl statistics on the Crawls page show daily 5xx counts and are the best way to see intermittent errors that a single nightly crawl misses.