404 not working?
-
Apologies - not strictly a search question, although I am concerned that it may be negatively impacting my sites.
If I enter an invalid URL - the "page not found 404 error" doesn't seem to be working. I can enter http://www.%sitename%/index.php/randomnamemadeup/ and it displays the homepage (albeit with a broken CSS).
I can't fathom it out - any help appreciated. Thanks, David
-
I haven't created one - no.
-
Have you made a custom 404 page? If so, yes.
-
Agree - is this likely to sit in htaccess configuration?
-
I would suggest you to fix this issue soon. Otherwise Google may report soft 404 error at one fine day.
Also check your redirect rules. Redirecting error pages to home page should be avoided.
-
Hi Martijn, I seem to have the same issue across a number of my PHP sites.
An industry friend that I link to brought the issue to my attention - he dropped me a line to highlight that alot of these random pages are shown to be linking to his site - rather than just the homepage. I haven't managed to catch up with him to ask where this linking data has come from yet.
Apologies if I haven't explained this very well, but this is high on my list of things I'd like to fix.
- Appreciate there are other things I need to do on this website.
Thanks, David
-
Hi David,
It's not very cool that random urls are not responding with a 404 status code error. But for now I think you have other items to fix first. Because as long as you're not linking external or internal to these 'broken pages' also Google isn't able to find them. And so won't think the site has a lot of soft 404 errors. To be sure the best would be to take a look at the crawl errors within your Google Webmaster Tools account. If there are a lot of recent (soft) 404 pages/ errors found by Google I would move this more to the top of my todo list.
I would prefer myself to fix them later on, but like many things you probably have a lot of other todos you want to take care of first.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Marisa, try http://www.videogameprices.co.uk/index.php/randomulr/.
Many thanks.
-
We'd need to know your domain name so we can replicate the error.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
404 Errors for Form Generated Pages - No index, no follow or 301 redirect
Hi there I wonder if someone can help me out and provide the best solution for a problem with form generated pages. I have blocked the search results pages from being indexed by using the 'no index' tag, and I wondered if I should take this approach for the following pages. I have seen a huge increase in 404 errors since the new site structure and forms being filled in. This is because every time a form is filled in, this generates a new page, which only Google Search Console is reporting as a 404. Whilst some 404's can be explained and resolved, I wondered what is best to prevent Google from crawling these pages, like this: mydomain.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=90&catalogId=1008&homePage=Y Implement 301 redirect using rules, which will mean that all these pages will redirect to the homepage. Whilst in theory this will protect any linked to pages, it does not resolve this issue of why GSC is recording as 404's in the first place. Also could come across to Google as 100,000+ redirected links, which might look spammy. Place No index tag on these pages too, so they will not get picked up, in the same way the search result pages are not being indexed. Block in robots - this will prevent any 'result' pages being crawled, which will improve the crawl time currently being taken up. However, I'm not entirely sure if the block will be possible? I would need to block anything after the domain/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TopCategoriesDisplay?. Hopefully this is possible? The no index tag will take time to set up, as needs to be scheduled in with development team, but the robots.txt will be an quicker fix as this can be done in GSC. I really appreciate any feedback on this one. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | Ric_McHale0 -
404 errors
Hi I am getting these show up in WMT crawl error any help would be very much appreciated | ?ecaped_fragment=Meditation-find-peace-within/csso/55991bd90cf2efdf74ec3f60 | 404 | 12/5/15 |
Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve
| | 2 | mobile/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 3 | ?escaped_fragment=Tips-for-a-balanced-lifestyle/csso/1 | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 4 | ?escaped_fragment=My-favorite-yoga-spot/csso/5598e2130cf2585ebcde3b9a | 404 | 12/1/15 |
| | 5 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6 | 404 | 11/29/15 |
| | 6 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Tag/yoga | 404 | 11/30/15 |
| | 7 | ?escaped_fragment=Inhale-exhale-and-once-again/csso/2 | 404 | 11/27/15 |
| | 8 | ?escaped_fragment=classes/covl | 404 | 10/29/15 |
| | 9 | m/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
| | 10 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Page/1 | 404 | 11/30/15 | | |0 -
Does 404 hurts my website.?
Does 404 hurts my website.? My website reporting 404 crawl errors on pages that have never been part of the website. Site showing lot of 404 errors and all errors from Blog.We didn't create any pages .Automatically pages are created and showing 404 (Not Found) error response..Please any one help me to identify those issues.?
Technical SEO | | nlogix0 -
Find all 404 links in my site that are indexed
Hi All, Find all 404 links in my site that are indexed. We deleted a lot of URl's from site but now i dont have the track of all we deleted. Any site/Tool can scan the index and give me the exact URL's so I can use https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals?hl=en&rlf=all Regards Martin
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
The search button on my site no longer works. Any fixes?
I have a wordpress site (can be found at theFlooringGirl.com). On all the pages, there is a search button so you can search for words on the site, but it no longer seems to work. My original webdesigner put it in, and I can't seem where to find it/where to edit/fix it. I finally found something that mentions "search" in the widget section and it is in the tool bar, but I can't find where/how to edit/fix it. BTW, I do have two other smaller sites that have this button and it still works there...so if I could find where to edit, I could theoretically copy and paste the code...if I knew where). Any advice? Thx.
Technical SEO | | Jborgueta0 -
"/blogroll" causing 404 error
I'm running a campaign, and the crawling report for my site returned a lot of 4xx errors. When I look at the URLs, they all have a "/blogroll" in the end, like: mysite.com/post-number-1/blogroll mysite.com/post-number-2/blogroll And so on, for pretty much all the pages. The thing is, I removed the blogroll widget completely, so I really wouldn't know what can possibly point to links like that. Is there anything to fix on the site? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Baffo0 -
Should there be a canonical tag on my 404 error page?
In my crawl diagnostics, I notice some 4xx client errors. They are appearing for pages that no longer exist, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Shouldn't they just be dealt as 404's? Anyway, on closer inspection I noticed that my 404 error page contains a canonical tag which points to the missing page. Could this be the issue? Is it a good idea to remove the canonical tag from this error page? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Leighm0 -
How rel=canonical works with index, noindex ?
Hello all, I had always wondered how the index,noindex affects to the canonical. And also if the canonical post should be included in the sitemap or not. I posted this http://www.comparativadebancos.co... and with a rel=canonical to this that was published at the beginning of the month http://www.comparativadebancos.co... but then I have the first one in google http://www.google.com/search?aq=f... May be this is evident for you but, what is really doing the canonical? If I publish something with the canonical pointing to another page, will it still be indexed by google but with no penalty for duplicate content? Or the usual behaviour should have been to havent indexed the first post but just the second one? Should I also place a noindex in the first post in addition to the canonical? What am I missing here? thanks
Technical SEO | | antorome0