Pages with Temporary Redirects on pages that don't exist!
-
Hi There
Another obvious question to some I hope.
I ran my first report using the Moz crawler and I have a bunch of pages with temporary redirects as a medium level issue showing up. Trouble is the pages don't exist so they are being redirected to my custom 404 page.
So for example I have a URL in the report being called up from lord only knows where!:
This doesn't exist, I have only 1 home.aspx page and it's in the root directory! but it is giving a temp redirect to my 404 page as I would expect but that then leads to a MOZ error as outlined. So basically you could randomize any url up and it would give this error so I am trying to work out how I deal with it before Google starts to notice or before a competitor starts to throw all kinds at my site generating these errors.
Any steering on this would be much appreciated!
-
Hi Guys, OK so we resolved this and it's a Microsoft issue!! and a schoolboy mistake from me!
We use "Web User Controls" on the website that allow us to write re-usable modules for things like headers, burger menus and footers in an ASP.NET web solution. We then drag and drop the onto any page and if we need to change them then we just change the core web user control HTML.
The rogue links were coming from these web user controls, when they were on pages in the rogue directories.
Now the reason we had this fault on this website on not on any other was because we made the mistake of using standard HTML
Well if the page is in the root directory then no problem. If you want to go to the home.aspx page then the link is fine (HOME
However if you put this footer on page in a sub folder then you need to change the link to ../home.aspx, but you can;t do that or all the pages in the root folder go squeewy. So this is why you use an ASP:Hyperlink control instead, this allows you to define a page from root with the ~/home.aspx link.
This is where all of these rogue pages were coming form.
TY for the help guys.
-
Hi There, I sent you a PM last week but no cigar so far!
I can't see a way to send you an attached file, I am guessing I am waiting for an email for you?
Dave
-
Hi There
Sorry for the delay, stag do at the weekend and Windows update trashed my PC today!!
So I will PM you with the spreadsheet, massive appreciation for taking a look.
-
I guess I need to know where the heck these could be coming from?
There is a town of Heck in the UK, but the links are probably not from there. Sorry, I digress.
I would need to look at the CSV, as I think you might be seeing part of a loop in your example above as if I am reading it correctly you have a page linking to itself that redirects to another page.
PM me your website URL and send the CSV.
-
Hi Guys
TY for the help, however the website is a raw and simple IIS one. I have root access to the server and we manually upload and update all the sites we run, nothing fancy. There's no CMS, just good old .aspx pages, images and a few folders. The website is pretty static.
So here's some info from 1 entry in the CSV file of the report: (Replaced domain just to keep it private)
URL: http://domain.com/casestudies/home.aspx
HTTP Code: 302
Redirect URL: /Error404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/casestudies/home.aspx
Referrer:
http://domain.com/casestudies/Home.aspx
I have double checked there are no accidental pages at these locations.
I have been setting up some rewrite/redirect rules, but these are allthe noemal trainling slah, www to root, removal of .aspx and some specific page redirects fro the old site but thats it.
I guess I need to know where the heck these could be coming from?
Dave
-
I have a URL in the report being called up from lord only knows where!:
Well, the good Lord does know where those pages are linked to due to the whole omnipotent thing He has going on, but if the Moz bot found those pages then that means that the bot knows and you can too! If Moz bot found the links, then somewhere, someplace on your site, there are links to those pages. Somewhere in your CMS or due to a typo, those links are being generated on your website.
If you download the CSV within the Moz crawl report section, you can look in the column that shows what pages link to those pages that do not exist anymore and have the temp 302 redirect url. You can then go to those pages that link to the 302s and update them to correct the 302 redirect links. I would do this ASAP on those 302 redirects. You can also use other spider tools such as Screaming Frog, or Botify or Site Condor (there are a bunch out there) to find links like this.
One other suggestion, I assume if you have a temporary redirect, you are seeing a 302 (temporary) vs a 301 (permanent) redirect. If you can, setup your server to use a 404 (page not found) vs the 302 (temporary redirect) when a page does not exist. IMHO, 302s are from Satan himself and I have seen them wreak havoc on how Google indexed one of my sites when I used them. At least with the 404 you get the right signal to Google and then when the crawler finds them, you do not have to be as worried about them.
Good luck and keep the faith!
-
Are you using a CMS? Often some archive files or sitemap, could generate traffic to pages which doesn't exist. How about a search function? Do you have any type of domain.com/s=?something that is being linked to?
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 don't I have permission to view the update calendar?
I am trying to figure out when the next Open Site update will be. In the past I have just gone here - https://seomoz.zendesk.com/entries/345964-linkscape-update-schedule It is saying I do not have permission even though I am logged in. Anyone else having issues? Or if anyone can see it can they see when the next update is?
Moz Pro | | EcommerceSite0 -
1 page crawled - again
Just had to let you know that it happend again. So right now we are at 2 out of the last 4 crawls. Uptime here is 99,8% for the last 30 days, with a small downtime due to an update process at the 18/5 from around 2:30 to 4:30 GMT In relation to: http://moz.com/community/q/1-page-crawled-and-other-errors
Moz Pro | | alsvik0 -
Crawled pages are missing and showing just 1 page crawled
One of my campaign has got around 8500 pages crawled(seomoz) and reports are shown, but suddenly it is showing 1 page crawled. Why it is happened like this? How can i get back the previous reports?
Moz Pro | | Sulekha0 -
'Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical', Critical Factor but appears correct on page
Hi, Trying to get the following page ranked unsuccessfully.... http://www.joules.com/en-GB/2/Collections-Quilted-Jackets/c01c02.r16.1 Instead a product page is being ranked, shown below.... http://www.joules.com/en-GB/Womens-Quilted-Jacket/Navy/M_HAMPTON/ProductDetail.raction When I run the on page report card it advises that the Rel Canonical tag needs to point to that page, but we have checked and it looks to be doing that already. Has anyone else had an issue like this? Thanks, Martin
Moz Pro | | rockethot0 -
Crawl Diagnostics finding pages that dont exist. Will Rel Canon Help?
I have recently set up a campaign for www.completeoffice.co.uk. Im the in-house developer there. When the crawl diagnostics completed, i went to check the results, and to my surprise, it had well over 100 missing or empty title tags. I then clicked it to see what pages, and nearly all the pages it say have missing or empty title tags, DO NOT EXIST. This has really confused me and need help figuring out how to solve this. Can anyone help? Attached image is a screen shot of some of the links it showed me on crawl diagnostics, nearly all of these do not exist. Will the relation Canonical tag in the head section of the actual pages help? For example, The actual page that exist is: www.completeoffice.co.uk/Products.php Whereas, when crawled it actually showed www.completeoffice.co.uk/Products/Products.php Will have the rel can tag in the header of the real products.php solve this?
Moz Pro | | CompleteOffice0 -
Multiple Page Title Elements?
Greetings, I am baffled by the recommendation I repeatedly receive from seomoz's on-page optimization tool. The web page I am working on only shows one title between <title>and</title> in it's head. However, seomoz is also reading "Pass to multiple" from somewhere. It recommends that I "Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements" and I would like to but cannot find them. Any suggestions? By the way, I inherited this site and am just trying to deconstruct someone else's work. As a novice, I realize there might be some obvious explanation that I am just missing. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | shedontdiet0