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  4. 4XX Errors - Adding %5c%5c to Links

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4XX Errors - Adding %5c%5c to Links

Technical SEO
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  • potpiegirl
    potpiegirl last edited by May 31, 2012, 1:43 PM

    Hi all  😃

    Hope someone can help me with this.

    The internal links on my hubby's business site occasionally break and add %5c%5c%5c endlessly to the end of the url - like this:

    site.com/about/hours-of-operation/\\\\\\\\%

    I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is doing this and while it has happened to me from time to time, I can't recreate it.

    My crawl diagnostics here in my SEOMox campaign show 19-20 urls doing this - it's nuts.

    Any insight?

    Thank you!!

    Jennifer

    ~PotPieGirl

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • potpiegirl
      potpiegirl @irvingw last edited by May 31, 2012, 3:18 PM May 31, 2012, 3:18 PM

      Both Shane and I looked and neither of saw any / vs \ issues.

      Then, I just took a peek at my source code and look what I saw:

      http://screencast.com/t/y02R4RS2L

      Think that is it?

      Thanks for replying!

      Jennifer

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • potpiegirl
        potpiegirl @potpiegirl last edited by May 31, 2012, 2:33 PM May 31, 2012, 2:33 PM

        Sent you a PM, Shane - thanks so much for the offer!

        By "occasionally break", I mean that every now and again, any link on the site will freak out and add the %5c jibberish to the end.

        Jennifer

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Jinx14678
          Jinx14678 @potpiegirl last edited by May 31, 2012, 2:22 PM May 31, 2012, 2:21 PM

          It would really have to be....

          The only reason for a %5C is the use of backslash - as that is actually what it means in code.

          **business site occasionally break **

          How do you mean "break" ?

          My crawl diagnostics here in my SEOMox campaign show 19-20 urls doing this - it's nuts.

          Is the only issue from this in SEOMOZ reports?

          If you would like to PM me the site I can attempt to profile it

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • potpiegirl
            potpiegirl @Jinx14678 last edited by May 31, 2012, 2:14 PM May 31, 2012, 2:14 PM

            Thanks for replying so quickly, Shane!

            I don't believe it's a / vs \ issue.  It's a wordpress site.  Key pages are in the top nav bar (all urls correct) and all the side bar links are 'widgets' and created by Wordpress.

            For some reason I am suspecting a theme issue, but if I can't recreate the error, I'll have no way of knowing if changing the theme solves the problem.

            Site has been online since 2010 with no issues...this is a new issue (past couple months according to crawl diagnostics).

            Thanks!!!

            Jinx14678 potpiegirl 2 Replies Last reply May 31, 2012, 2:33 PM Reply Quote 0
            • irvingw
              irvingw last edited by May 31, 2012, 2:10 PM May 31, 2012, 2:10 PM

              somewhere in your url coding you added backslash instead of slash which is not valid.

              potpiegirl 1 Reply Last reply May 31, 2012, 3:18 PM Reply Quote 1
              • Jinx14678
                Jinx14678 last edited by May 31, 2012, 2:12 PM May 31, 2012, 2:08 PM

                It appears from research it is actually \   (backslash)  not / (slash)

                So possibly somewhere in your site you have used \ instead of /  but of course this is just a possibility, as it appears that %5C is the delimiter or interpretation of \ in original Unix.

                Hope this helps

                PS a quick check at http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp verified %5c is URL encode, for backslash - as it is treated as a special character, so somewhere in your CMS or code, you have used backslash instead of slash.

                potpiegirl 1 Reply Last reply May 31, 2012, 2:14 PM Reply Quote 1
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