Wordpress No 404
-
Hello,
My issue is that in wordpress 404 does not seem to be working properly.
An example of this is:
sitename.com/category/catname loads the files in that category but I can also type
sitename.com/category/asdasfaasd/catname and it still goes to the posts in that category and does not 404. I can replace the misc text with anything and it does not 404.
My worry is that this can be used to exploit duplicate content.
I've looked at a couple of other sites and they do the same.
I'm using Yoast as my SEO plugin and my theme is elogix from themeforest.
I've tried disabling all plugins, cloudflare and changing theme and the same issue exists.
If anyone can help it would be extremely appreciated.
-
Hi Paul,
Will do. I forgot to mention but I actually found the flaw with the 404 when I was looking at the SEOmoz crawler statistics. It said that my sub categories were duplicate content as the pages it was referring to were assigned to multiple categories.
An example roughly based on my structure that it detected as duplicate content is the posts existing in: /category/seo/no1 and /category/seo/no2 so as a result it was duplicate content. I deleted the sub categories and assigned them all to just the SEO category and realised that the sub categories were still resolving so to troubleshoot this I decided to add a random prefix to the end e.g. /seo/asdnas and the address still resolved to the root category.
My theory was that if someone generated for example 100 urls and built links that google would see it as 100 duplicate pages due to the fact it was not 404ing or changing url when as you said 301ing.
I will close the thread and mark your question as good answer.
Cheers.
-
Hmmm... you should be seeing the URL change in the browser's address bar after the redirect pushes to the corrected URL, Luke. I certainly do in my installs that I confirmed it with.
At any rate, if this answered your question fully, would be a good idea to mark the question as "Answered" to help other users. I'd also love a mark as "Good Answer if you found it valuable.
And yea, absolutely - something new to learn every day. That's what I love about this business
I only remember seeing this correction functionality mentioned once in passing in some documentation, but I couldn't find it by search even though i knew what I was looking for. So no wonder you couldn't scrounge it up.
Paul
-
Hi Paul,
Thanks for clearing that up for me!. When I was playing with it I was extremely confused as normally 301 actually redirects and shows the new URL.
As a temporary solution I ended up stripping the category base meaning it now 404s or 301s to the correct page if you try any of the things I originally mentioned.
I actually did a fair bit of research on it prior to asking on SEOmoz and could not find anything at all about it. I even asked a couple of web developers I know who use Joomla and Drupal and they could not figure it out either.
You clearly do learn something new every day as I had no idea about this prior to your reply.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question and clearing it up for me, it's appreciated,
Luke
-
WordPress has this error-correction functionality built-in, Luke.
If you user a server header checking tool on that non-existent URL, you'll see that WP is automatically using a 301-redirect to push the user to the correct address each time - so no duplicate content or split authority problems at all.
Paul
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
-
Redirecting 404 pages
Hello,We have a wordpress site that has some "hidden" pages with weird URL's. Due to the way the site was built (not by us) if we setup our standard practice for 404 pages some site functionality will be lost.Standard Practice for 404's www.domain.com/fafsaf shows 404 error pageProposed solution:- www.domain.com/safaf >forwards to> www.domain.com/404 - shows 404 error page. Will this stop the search engines indexing the pages? - we have also amended the robots.txt to try and stop some pages being indexed but we still keep finding the odd little "hidden" page.The aim is to try and get all the search engines just to index the few simple pages on the sitemap instead of finding all these extra pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
How should I go about repairing 400,000 404 error pages?
My thinking is to make a list of most linked to and most trafficked error pages, and just redirect those, but I don't know how to get all that data because i can't even download all the error pages from Webmaster Tools, and even then, how would i get backlink data except by checking each link manually? Are there any detailed step-by-step instructions on this that I missed in my Googling? Thanks for reading!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Moving from a static HTML CSS site with .html files to a Wordpress Site while keeping link structure
Mozzers, Hope this finds you well. I need some advice. We have a site built with a dreamweaver template, and it is lacking in responsiveness, ease of updates, and a lot of the coding is behind traditional web standards (which I know will start to hurt our rank - if not the user experience). For SEO purposes, we would like to move the existing static based site to Wordpress so we can update it easily and keep content fresh. Our current site, thriveboston.com, has a lot of page extensions ending in .html. For the transition, it is extremely important for us to keep the link structure. We rank well in the SERPs for Boston Counseling, etc... I found and tested a plugin (offline) that can add a .html extension to Wordpress pages, which allows us to keep our current structure, but has anyone had any luck with this live? Has anyone had any luck moving from a static site - to a Wordpress site - while keeping the current link structure - without hurting any rank? We hope to move soon because if the site continues to grow, it will become even harder to migrate the site over. Also, does anyone have any hesitations? It this a bad move? Should we just stay on the current DWT template (the HTML and CSS) and not migrate? Any suggestions and advice will be heeded. Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _Thriveworks0 -
Category Base in Wordpress
I notice that there is a checkbox on the Yoast SEO Plugin for "strip category base". What is the reason to do this? What are the SEO advantages and disadvantages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Is there an easy way to create this type of post, wordpress?
I run a site that is in Google news and built on wordpress. I have seen this type of post on a few sites http://searchengineland.com/searchcap-the-day-in-search-december-21-2012-143315 Its basically a summary of posts for that day or week etc I am wondering, does anyone know of an easy way to create these types of pages? At the moment we simply copy and paste and create all links manually. Im wondering, is there a plugin that allows you to create a post like this but quicker? Any ideas at all would be great Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Changing Wordpress Permalinks Bad For SEO?
Hi, I have various pages set up such as http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/wedding-singer. Is there any benefit in SEO terms to changing it to http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-music/wedding-singer? I would presume that a keyword would be better for SEO than 'home' which is irrelevant? Also if I were to change it would all the links external I have on other sites pointing to http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/wedding-singer be lost as the url no longer exists? I suppose I could set up a manual redirect from http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/wedding-singer to http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-music/wedding-singer or would wordpress automatically redirect from the old to new? By redirecting I understand that some 'link juice' is lost along the way so is including the keyword in the url of enough benefit to warrant losing some link juice? Finally if I do change the url to include the keyword how do I do it in wordpress? I can only see how to change the page title using the 'edit' button when editing a page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK1 -
Are free WordPress templates bad for SEO?
Hello, I often build sites using WordPress. The other day I read an article in which the author stated that the sites built using the free WordPress template are not SEO-friendly. Could someone please confirm this statement? Does this mean that I need to develop themes myself or buy WordPress templates? Thank you for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Status Code 404: But why?
Google Web Master Tool reported me that I have several 404 staus code., First they were 2, after 4..6 and 10, right now. Every time I add a new page. I've got a no CMS managed website. After old website was been deleted, I installed Wordpress, created new page and deleted and blocked (robots.txt) old page. Infact all page not found don't exist!!! (Pic: Page not found). The strange thing is that no pages link to those 404 pages (All Wordpress Created page are new!!!). Seomoz doesn't report me any 404 error (Pic 3) I controlled all my pages: No "strange" link in any pages No link reported by Seomoz tool Bu why GWMT reports me that one? How can I risolve that problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Greenman
I'm going crazy!!! Regards
Antonio BgelG.png eCaDU.png ZIi2f.jpg0