4xx error - but no broken links founded by Xenu
-
In my SeoMoz crawl report I get multiple 4XX errors reported and they are all on the same type of links. www.zylom.com/nl/help/contact/9/ and differiate between the number at the end and the language.
But I i look in the source code we nice said:
<a class="<a class="attribute-value">bigbuttonblue</a>" style="<a class="attribute-value">float:right; margin-left:10px;</a>" href="[/nl/help/contact/9/?sid=9&e=login](view-source:http://www.zylom.com/nl/help/contact/9/?sid=9&e=login)" onfocus="<a class="attribute-value">blur()</a>" title="<a class="attribute-value">contact</a>"> contact a>
I already tested the little helpfull tool Xenu, but this also doesn't give any broken links for the url's which I found in the 4xx error report.
Could somebody give me a suggestion Why these 4xx errors keep coming? Could it be that the SeoMoz crawlers break the part ?sid=9&e=login' from the URL. Because if you want to enter the link, you first get a pop-up to fill in a login screen.
Thanks for you answers already
-
Hey Letty
If I request the full link in webbug I get a 200 okay response.
http://www.zylom.com/nl/help/contact/9/?sid=9&e=login
If I request the link less the variables in webbug I get the 404 as reported by the moz crawler.
http://www.zylom.com/nl/help/contact/9/
I would go into analytics, check to see which pages you have 404's for if it is just '/nl/help/contact/9/' then I don't think you have a problem.
I think nofollow would be a good solution and if we look at part of the nofollow page on google webmaster support:
"Before
nofollow
was used on individual links, preventing robots from following individual links on a page required a great deal of effort (for example, redirecting the link to a URL blocked in robots.txt). That's why thenofollow
attribute value of therel
attribute was created. This gives webmasters more granular control: instead of telling search engines and bots not to follow any links on the page, it lets you easily instruct robots not to crawl a specific link. For example:"Now, I am not 100% sure if the seomoz crawler respects nofollows (I would imagine it does) but certainly, if other robots are following this link and generating 404's (again, head into your analytics to get a handle on this) then it will certainly help there.
After all, this link is not for robots, it is not to be indexed, it is just a log in form for users so nofollowing that link seems to make perfect sense.
Hope that helps!
MarcusReferences:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569
-
Hi Marcus,
A link would be www.zylom.com/nl/help/contact/9/?sid=9&e=login
I think the pop-up screens which requested an login, is causing the 4xx error. because you can't enter without login. Think we should put a no-follow on these types of url's and that could solve the problem. What are your thoughts after seeing the link.
-
Hey Letty
It is somewhat hard to say without seeing a link but if Xenu says no broken links then it is likely as you suspect and the moz crawler is having a problem with those links.
Maybe try to confirm one way or the other in Google Analytics. An easy way (from memory) to do this is to search your pages so Content > Site Content > All pages for your custom 404 page (if you have one). Then, you can dig in and see if these are real errors or are just some kind of red herring (most likely).
Hope that helps!
Marcus
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
-
Soft 404 error
Hello friends
Technical SEO | | industriestaedt
This is my site
https://www.alihosseini.org/ In the search console I have a soft 404 error
How can I fix this error?
I use WordPress0 -
Can I redirect a link even if the link is still on the site
Hi Folks, I've got a client who has a duplicate content because they actually create duplicate content and store the same piece of content in 2 different places. When they generate this duplicate content, it creates a 2nd link on the site going to the duplicate content. Now they want the 2nd link to always redirect to the first link, but for architecture reasons, they can't remove the 2nd link from the site navigation. We can't use rel-canonical because they don't want visitors going to that 2nd page. Here is my question: Are there any adverse SEO implications to maintaining a link on a site that always redirects to a different page? I've already gone down the road of "don't deliberately create duplicate content" with the client. They've heard me, but won't change. So, what are your thoughts? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rock330 -
Feefo review links
Hi guys, so we are on feefo and noticed links coming in per review for different anchor text, this will be done on mass due to the amount of reviews we will get - this is all natural but in SEO site-wide links are typically not. How if at all do you think Google will react to this?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Navigation links tagged as H3
I'm reviewing a website that has used the H3 tag in the Navigation Menu. I've not seen that before and first thought is it is a dodgy. Tags should relate to content on the page not link to another page. As a result of using H3 in Nav the ratio of content wrapped in Heading tags vs body content is quite high. My recommendation is to remove H3 tag from Nav but having searched Moz and not finding an article to verify that recommendation thought I'd ask the question.
Technical SEO | | NicDale0 -
Track outbound links
I would like to track outbound links at http://bit.ly/yYHmbf 1. Shall i add the following code before at the above page What does 100 means in above code ? 2. Then use this for each outgoing link ``` [onClick="recordOutboundLink(this, 'Outbound Links', 'example.com');return false;">](http://www.example.com) ``` [](http://www.example.com) ```[``` http://www.example.com is the outbound link Am i right on both counts ? where should i look for report in GA ? ```](http://www.example.com)
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
404 errors and what to do
Hi, I am fairly new to the whole seo thing and am still getting confused a bit as to what to do to sort things out. I've checked the help pages but I cannot seem to find the issue. I've just signed up so my site is crawled for the first time and coming up with more then a 1000 404 errors. I checked a couple of the links via the report I downloaded and it does indeed show a 404 error but when I check the pages all seems to work fine. I did find one issue where an image if clicked on twice was pointing to an url with 'title= at the end. Now I have tried to get of that but couldn't find anything wrong. I'm a bit lost as to where to start!
Technical SEO | | junglefrog0 -
A Puzzling Link
I'm stumped and I'm hoping some mozzers will be able to help. I run our company blog (http://scottymacblog.com/). The last couple of days I have noticed that the blog is receiving some traffic from cnn.com. I looked, but cannot find any mention of the blog on cnn. Adding to my frustration is that the content on cnn is constantly changing. Our blog doesn't do any sort of advertising and no one affiliated with the blog posts on cnn. As great as it is to be getting traffic from such a valued source, I have no idea why. Has something like this happened to (for?) anyone else? Any ideas on how I can research the source of the link? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | EssEEmily0 -
Link API returns Error 500
http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/links/nz.yahoo.com?SourceCols=4&Limit=100&Sort=domain_authority&Scope=domain_to_domain&Filter=external+follow&LinkCols=4 Hi folks any idea why the above returns Err 500 ? Seems to pertain to the domain - it works on other sites just not nz.yahoo.com Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jimbo_kemp0