Mod rewrite question
-
Sorry in advance if this isn't the best place to ask this question.
Google Webmaster Tools has recently identified a ton of "Not Found" pages, which are actual pages with some digits appended at the end.
For example, suppose an actual page on my blog is:
(A) http://www.example.com/blog/2012/09/my-post-title/
This page works just fine.
However, GWT has identified the following page as a "not found" page:
(B) http://www.example.com/blog/2012/09/my-post-title/9157586677/1846732913010
This appears to be happening to hundreds of posts on my site. In each case, the "9157586677" portion of the URL is identical, but the remaining 13 digits change from page to page.
I haven't been able to determine exactly what is causing this to happen - it's probably a social plug-in for Wordpress, or perhaps Disqus, but I'm not sure which one. I'll go through a process of elimination to narrow it down over the coming week.
As a quick fix, I'd like to create a ModRewrite rule so that requests for (B) get 301 redirected to (A). Since there are hundreds of posts, I need to do this in a way that works regardless of what's in the "/2012/09/my-post-title/" part of the URL.
Unfortunately, mod-rewrite is outside of my area of expertise. Can somebody please suggest how I can handle this? Thanks in advance.
PS - As for tracking down the cause, I've looked at the source of the pages in the "Linked From" area of GWT and the Not Found link is nowhere to be found. That is why I assume the bad link is being generated by some javascript that is a part of one of my plug-ins.
Update: It seems like Disqus is the source of these phantom links. There's considerable discussion here. I'll continue searching for a long-term solution. Meanwhile, I'd still appreciate help with the mod-rewrite question above. Thanks again.
-
I've found a solution and am posting it here in case anybody else is having the same problem:
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([^/]+)/[0-9]+ /blog/$1/$2/$3/ [L,R=301]
-
I hadnt seen the update over Disquss at the end of the post.
Please, post all your advances on this topic Ahirai
Best regards!
-
Hi ahirai,
I was gonna say you should check the linked from tab in GWT but since you actually did it, for me its pretty sure that a plugin that drives content is creating this issue from scratch.
Since i´m neither an apache expert, i can´t give you a method to do the dirty work, but i can tell you the problem is created by some 3rd party plugin driving content of site.
Please, post your advances in the topic!
Good luck!!
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
-
Question About Thin Content
Hello, We have an encyclopedia type page on our e-commerce site. Basically, it's a page with a list of terms related to our niche, product definitions, slang terms, etc. The terms on the encyclopedia page are each linked to their own page that contains the term and a very short definition (about 1-2 sentences). The purpose of these is to link them on product pages if a product has a feature or function that may be new to our customers. We have about 82 of these pages. Are these pages more likely to help us because they're providing information to visitors, or are they likely to hurt us because of the very small amount of content on each page? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | mostcg0 -
Subdomain Ranking Question
Hi All - Quick question that I think I know the answer to, but I feel like I've been going around in circles a bit. My client is launching a new product and wants us to build a microsite for it (product.clientname.com). My client really dislikes their brand website, and wants to use paid media to push their audience to this new microsite. However, they also said want it to rank well organically. I feel uneasy about this, because of the subdomain vs. subfolder argument. I believe that the product will also be listed/featured on their main brand website. What is the best way forward? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AinsleyAgency0 -
Just saw a competitor jump in rank by double digits, questioning my url structure choice now.
Currently I have for our big keyword oursite.com/big-keyword/ and clicking on a material type will be oursite.com/big-keyword/material-type/ Our competition has **theirsite.com/big-keyword/ **and when you click on their material type **theirsite.com/material-type-big-keyword/ ** The also have 20 some pages, while we have around 652 as a eCommerce site as well, not sure why they jumped so high in rankings, while their backlink structure is so small still and they have a DA half of ours. I'm in the middle of a site redesign and very close to restructuring the urls the way they have it, since it really seems to have worked well. How do you feel about that?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Is it necessary to 301 rewrite /index.php to /?
Hi, We have build a lot of external link to http://www.oursite.com/ Do I have to do a 301 redirect from http://www.oursite.com/index.php to http://www.outsite.com/? Thanks
Technical SEO | | LauraHT0 -
One more redirect question
If there are two URLs like below: example.com/toys/batman-toys
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
example.com/birthday/batman-toys Both have the exact same everything, except URL key. The first example ranks for all KWs and search terms in the SEs. Does having the second page hurt my ranking potential for the first page? Should I redirect the 2nd page to the first or just leave it? As always, thanks for your help.0 -
Duplicate content question...
I have a high duplicate content issue on my website. However, I'm not sure how to handle or fix this issue. I have 2 different URLs landing to the same page content. http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/vegan/ and http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/raw-food/ .In this situation, I cannot redirect one URL to the other since in the future I will probably be adding additional posts to either the "vegan" tag or the "raw food tag". What is the solution in this case? Thank you
Technical SEO | | myfitstation0 -
Rel="canonical" and rewrite
Hi, I'm going to describe a scenario on one of my sites, I was wondering if someone could tell me what is the correct use of rel="canonical" here. Suppose I have a rewrite rule that has a rule like this: RewriteRule ^Online-Games /main/index.php So, in the index file, do I set the rel="canonical" to Online-Games or /main/index.php? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | webtarget0 -
Robots.txt question
I want to block spiders from specific specific part of website (say abc folder). In robots.txt, i have to write - User-agent: * Disallow: /abc/ Shall i have to insert the last slash. or will this do User-agent: * Disallow: /abc
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050