404 Errors generating in WP
-
Our crawl reports are generating back several 404 errors for pages with urls that look like:
/category/consulting/page/5/
The tag changes, the page number changes, but the result is always the same: A big glaring 404. Our sites are built on WordPress Multi-site, and I am fairly certain this issue is on the WP end, but I can't figure out why it is generating pages out to infinity, essentially, from the tags and categories.
It is worse on some sites than others, but is happening across the board (my initial concern was that it might be a theme issue, but that does not seem to be the case).
If anyone has run into this issue and knows a fix, you're insight would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
-
This is the exact answer that you want if you have any issues running into problems once you have isolated them with screaming frog you can easily pick them out and redirect them either through your host or through a plug-in depending upon where you're hosted and how your site is being managed.
-
Here's what to do;
- Crawl the site with Screaming Frog (you can do up to 500 URLs with the free version).
- Look for the suspect pages in your crawl list.
- Click once on the page in the list
- Below, click "To Links" - and this box will show you the page(s) linking to the bad 404 page.
- View the "From" page (which links to the bad page) in your browser.
- Look at the source code for that page - do a "find" and paste in the bad page's URL. This will show you where it's linking from.
- Fix the spot in your theme or template where it is linking to pages that do not exist.
-
I want to first say I apologize for the wording on my first answer I was using voice recognition and it made a few mistakes. I also want to say I agree with what Dan has said he really knows WordPress and I would take
his advice the fact that he's endorsed Lynn's answer makes me believe that it is the correct one and screaming frog spider is one of the best tools in the world for any type of website and can help you create 301's easily to get rid of your 404's on the paid version
here is a great Screaming frog spider guide By Seer
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide
I hope this helps,
Thomas
-
Hi Melissa, you've received some great responses. Did any of them help you resolve your issue?
-
I second Lynn's answer. You need to find where the link is coming from to begin with. Could also use Screaming Frog SEO Spider or Webmaster Tools - they will all get you the same thing. Find out where the bad URLs are linked from, and then you can narrow down the source of bad code or whatever it may be.
-Dan
-
Yoast's SEO plug-in for WordPress
Will eliminate the /1/ /2/ /3/ page effect.
http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
I hope this is of help. The running multisite through a non-subdomain set up on expecting correct?
-
Hi Melissa,
It is actually pretty common for wp based sites to spin out repeated 404 errors (or at least have the potential to do this). It could be a theme issue, a plugin issue or a setup issue or a combination of all 3 depending on the site.
First thing to do is figure out where the link is coming from. Download your moz error report in csv and filter by 404's. On the left you will have the 404 page and on the far right you will have the referring page. Go to the referring page and view the source and try to find that link. Keep an eye out for relative links from deep structure pages also (so you have page /category/page/5 and the link is a relative href="/" or href="/6" which can have the effect of spawning repeated 404s like /category/page/5/6 etc etc).
Once you have found the link, you should be able to identify the template part which is producing them and then act accordingly to either edit the template or adjust the settings/plugin so that they stop. If you can give us a real example of a 404 and its linking page we should be able to give you more specific info.
-
I seriously doubt the issue is with WP. perhaps a plugin might be conflicting with how the page is rendered. Make sure you have a database and file backup. You could FTP in and rename the plugins folder to _plugins ( this will disable all plugins ) and check if the issue persists. Rename the folder back to plugins once you finish testing it.
NOTE : with some plugins you will have to manually go in a enable and configure them after you do this.
-
Hi 404 are extremely common. I would build 404 page and I would also use this plug-in here but make sure that you understand that this is by far no way perfect. You must check the logs consistently and make sure their note for forest mistaken for instance I had used it once and it had four or my feed back my homepage
http://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
However this is a very good plug-in that has been progressively getting better. It is recommended by some of the best people in WP I strongly recommend using it and I hope I've helped you if you need anymore help please let me know.
sincerely,
Thomas
Yes this will also work if you're using Nginx a much faster web server type that Apache or even lightspeed. However it is very hard to create 301 anyone use a Nginx web server environment. However this tool is able to do so and then most Managed WordPress hosts are the ones that are actually using Nginx with this Internet these days. Or managed WordPress hosts are able to then rewrite the correct 301 with this redirection plug-in is able to create 301 100% then most of the time people running Nginx host make the corrections after the redirection have to spend time.
The specialty of this redirection plug-in the is catching 404's and redirecting them to a page that it should be redirected to logically for instance if I was going to have /about/ 404 and then /about- us/ the plug-in easily figure that out that should be the correct redirect and then mixed the correction automatically you can also turn off this mode once you believe 404's are no longer an issue.
You can also use an Apache only mode which depending on your Web server might me your needs better depending on what type of Webster rerunning
I think this is an outstanding plug-in and definitely believe that it is a huge help if you have a any amount of 404s.
I hope I've been of help,
Thomas
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
-
Why would someone go to same 404 page over and over?
Good morning, I've been using the redirection plugin on my wordpress site and noticed i have multiple IP addresses going to the same folder on my site - like "mydomain.com/folder-name/". The "folder-name" is obviously not anything remotely like any folder or file name I have on my domain - so it's obviously spammy in nature. And, there are multiple IP addresses going to this same URL address every 3 hours on the dot, so it's appears automated. Is this something to be concerned about? Should I "do" anything? Thanks in advance for reading and replying!
Moz Pro | | mlm120 -
Seomoz crawl: 4XX (Client Error) How to find were the error are?
I got eight 404 errors with the Seomoz crawl, but the report does not says where the 404 page is linked from (like it does for dup content), or I'm I missing something? Thanks
Moz Pro | | PaddyDisplays0 -
404 errors, but not showing in Google analytics
In my SEOmoz errors there are over a dozen 404 errors listed. However, they are not showing up in Google analytics. How can I find the referring url for the ones showing up here?
Moz Pro | | sakeith0 -
Error on SEOMoz When Trying to Track Website. Please Advise
Hi, I'm trying to start a new campaign for a root domain, but I'm getting the "Roger found an error" and am not sure what to make of it. Error #1: "You've decided to set up a root domain campaign, but entered the subdomain path: www.siteurl.com. Don't worry, we'll switch that for you and crawl everything on the subdomain: www.siteurl.com. If you meant to set this up to only crawl pages in the root domain, click 'Go back and Change" and enter a root domain URL in step 1." Error #2: "Oops! The root domain siteurl.com redirects to a domain that is not within the specified root domain (www.siteurl.com). This will cause us to stop crawling as the first discovered page falls outside of the root domain you've defined. Please make sure you enter a root domain that resolves to a page that is under the root domain." What does this mean? Is there something I am doing wrong? The first error is what returned when I input www.siteurl.com. The second was returned when I put just siteurl.com. I didn't put up the exact URL for privacy reasons, but if you really do want to help me out, PM me and I can give you the real URL. Thanks in advance!
Moz Pro | | locallyrank0 -
Joined yesterday, today crawl errors (incorrectly) shows as zero...
Hi. We set up our SEOMoz account yesterday, and the initial crawl showed up a number of errors and warnings which we were in the process of looking at and resolving. I log into SEOMoz today and it's showing 0 errors, Pages Crawled: 0 | Limit: 10,000 Last Crawl Completed: Nov. 27th, 2012 Next Crawl Starts: Dec. 4th, 2012errors, warnings and notices show as 0, and the issues found yesterday show only in the change indicators.There's no way of getting to the results seen yesterday other than waiting a week?We were hoping to continue working through the found issues!
Moz Pro | | WorldText0 -
Help with URL parameters in the SEOmoz crawl diagnostics Error report
The crawl diagnostics error report is showing tons of duplicate page titles for my pages that have filtering parameters. These parameters are blocked inside Google and Bing webmaster tools. I do I block them within the SEOmoz crawl diagnostics report?
Moz Pro | | SunshineNYC0 -
Why am I getting an access error when creating my first campaign?
The exact error message is: The change you wanted was rejected. Maybe you tried to change something you didn't have access to. I checked the Word Count and I am definitely <300 keywords. I have also made sure that the Branded Keywords are entered 1 per entry form. My cookies are clear and there should be no issue with my browser.
Moz Pro | | trufflelabs0 -
Confounding "Accessible to Engines" error?
Most of the pages on our site "Accessible to Engines" test in the SEOmoz reports. We cannot find any problem with the code and it's largely identical to the few pages that come up with an "A" score. One item that may be a reason is that we use meta http-equiv="refresh" content="600; For example in www.weatherzone.com.au/nsw/sydney/sydney We use this to fresh dynamic content on our site. Do search engines penalise pages that use this form of page refresh? Alternatively, is there a known bug in the SEOmoz "Accessible to Engines" report? Many thanks
Moz Pro | | weatherzone0