# Web crawler fields indexed without position data; cannot run PhraseQuery

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/web-crawler-fields-indexed-without-position-data-cannot-run-phrasequery/366758>\
**Category:** Elastic Search\
**Tags:** crawler\
**Created:** [September 18, 2024, 9:57pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/web-crawler-fields-indexed-without-position-data-cannot-run-phrasequery/366758 "2024-09-18T21:57:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 9

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**Author:** ![Sean\_Story](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/sean_story/32/69987_2.png) [@Sean\_Story](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Sean_Story)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2024, 8:28pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/web-crawler-fields-indexed-without-position-data-cannot-run-phrasequery/366758/9 "2024-09-26T20:28:06Z")

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> [@sarahg](#):
>
> New crawler method fails

😬 Ok, I think I've caused some confusion here. Some manual editing needs to be done between the GET and the PUT if you're creating a new index and needing to copy over the settings. The error message is identifying pieces of the payload that you'll want to just remove from the PUT. But then got an index already exists error because you used the index creation API for the approach where we don't need to create the index (it exists already), but only need to modify the mappings of an existing index. For that, use the `PUT <index>/_mapping` API you were trying originally. No settings necessary for that. Only need to worry about setting if you try to replace the original index.

> // Delete the original, which was associated with the crawler  
> DELETE /search-sarah-test-5
> 
> // Replace it with the new one. Error

What did you do for the "replace it with the new one" part? Given that the error complains that `search-sarah-test-5` does not exist, I'm worried that the "replace" didn't work. Again, I think it's probably going to be more straightforward to edit the mappings, so maybe we should just shelve this "replace the index" approach for now.

> I've now got a bunch of phantom crawlers that I can't delete

Oof, we're just hitting all the issues. I'm sorry for the experience you're having. This is a known issue we're working to get fixed. The workaround is described here: [Ghost Web Crawlers - #3 by Jedr\_Blaszyk](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/ghost-web-crawlers/363373/3)

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