Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to find a specific link on my website (currently causing redirects)
-
Hi everyone,
I've used crawlers like Xenu to find broken links before, and I love these tools. What I can't figure out is how to find specific pieces of code within my site. For example, Webmaster Tools tells me there are still links to old pages somewhere on my website but I just can't find them. Do you know of a crawler that can search for a specific link within the html?
Thanks in advance,
Josh
-
Use the SEOmoz crawl report.
Let Roger loose on your site, then when the report is available, filter the excel file on the broken link field. Then check the "referrer" field for each broken link. The referrer field will show the page where the broken link was discovered.
You can then use the SEOmoz bar to highlight the links on a page. Sometimes a link isn't obvious as it is hidden. In those cases you can always right-click on the page and choose View Page Source from the options, then search for the link.
-
Thanks for the reply.
I should have specified that the links are being reported in Bing webmaster tools and not Google webmaster tools. Bing doesn't seem to tell you where the bad links are.
-
Dreamweaver has a way of searching an entire website if you download the site to Dreamweaver. But webmaster tools should tell you where the links are being found on your site. They typically tell you which URL has the bad links.
-
There are a few ways I would approach this. In order:
-
Run a find in files using one of the text editors I use for coding, either UltraEdit or PhpEd, you can use whatever you are comfortable with,
-
Check the server logs for that page, it should show a referring page, which may not be on your site,
-
or just do a 301 from it to your home page or a relevant page. I have had situations where people link to the wrong page and I redirect them instead of letting it 404,
-
If you are sure it is an actual link on your site, and maybe it is being generated (you didn't post a link so I don't know which site you are referring to) , and not a redirect from somewhere, consider paying someone $5 on http://fiverr.com/ to find it.
-
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
-
Redirection chain and Javascript Redirect
Hi, A redirection chain is usually defined as a page redirecting to another page which itself is another redirection. URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(301/302)---> URL3 But what about Javascript redirect? They seem to be a different beast: URL1 ---(301/302)---> URL2 ---(200 then Javascript redirect)---> URL3 From what I know if the javascript redirect is instant Google counts it as a 301 permanent redirection, but I'm still not sure about if this counts as a redirection chain. Most of the tools (such as moz) only see the first redirection. So is that scenario a redirection chain or no?
Technical SEO | | LouisPortier0 -
How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
301 Redirect for multiple links
I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old
Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New
domain.com/urban
domain.com/urban/tempe
domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale0 -
Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?
My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Technical SEO | | usDragons0 -
Hreflang tags with link to redirect loop
Hi guys, I'm having a bit of an issue on a client site that I'm hoping someone can help me with. Basically, the client has two domains, one serving users in the Republic of Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com), showing Euro prices, and the other serving users in Northern Ireland (http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/) showing £ prices. The issue I'm having is that the URL for the Northern Ireland page has a 302 on it and goes through another 2/3 301 redirects until it resolves as http://www.americanholidays.com, however it does then show the £ prices. You can see the redirect chain here: http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker/?page=single&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanholidays.com%2Fgb_en%2F&useragent=1&typeProtocol=11 The homepage is using the Hreflang tag, and pointing search engines to serve the http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/ page to users using EN-GB as their language. The page is also using a self-referencing canonical, which I believe may negate the whole Hreflang tag anyway? My main question is - is the fact that the Hreflang for the gb_en page is pointing to a chain of redirects negatively affecting it? (I understand too many redirects are never good). Also, is the canonical negating the Hreflang? Any help/info would be great as I just can't get my head around it! Thanks guys Daniel
Technical SEO | | DanielKiely60 -
Find broken links in Excel?
Hello, I have a large list of URL's in an excel sheet and I am looking for a way to check them for 404 errors. Please help! Adam
Technical SEO | | digitalops0 -
Redirecting Root domain to subdirectory by IP addresses (country specific)
We are using Wordpress Multisite. so www.mysite.com is our English website and www.mysite.com/sub is our Chinese website Can I redirect Chinese visitors who type "www.mysite.com" to "www.mysite.com/sub" ? so we want to force redirection to www.mysite.com/sub if our website is visited by Chinese IP Address. I've realized that this is called GeoIP Redirection. and our hosting company already has those database, I guess my job is just to simply insert some code in .htacess My question is, would it affect our SEO later on? and what .htacess code is the best practice here?
Technical SEO | | joony20080 -
How to Redirect all inactive Feed to a specific Wordpress page
Hi Guys, I've been doing much cleaning on my blog lately and deleted numerous categories including their posts with low quality content. After deleting the categories, Google Webmaster Tools is reporting some 404 errors about the RSS Feeds for the deleted categories. I've created a 404.php file inside my theme and placed the following code header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
Technical SEO | | Trigun
header("Location: http://www.mysite.com/My404Page/", true, 301);
exit();
?> this have catched all 404 errors and redirected them to the specific page. Unfortunately, it could not catch the inactive feed urls. Is there a way to do this so that all inactive feeds will be redirected to my 404 page? Thanks in advance....0