Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Strange URLs, how do I fix this?

    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.

    Strange URLs, how do I fix this?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    6
    873
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • JohnPeters
      JohnPeters last edited by

      I've just check Majestic and have seen around 50 links coming from one of my other sites. The links all look like this:

      http://www.dwww.mysite.com
      http://www.eee.mysite.com
      http://www.w.mysite.com

      The site these links are coming from is a html site.

      Any ideas whats going on or a way to get rid of these urls?

      When I visit the strange URLs such as http://www.dwww.mysite.com, it shows the home page of http://www.mysite.com. Is there a way to redirect anything like this back to the home page?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Cyrus-Shepard
        Cyrus-Shepard @JohnPeters last edited by

        I'm not an expert here, but it sounds like your server is configured to resolve wildcard subdomains.

        Unfortunately, I'm not nearly technical enough to even begin to tell you how to solve it. This is generally configured in your hosting account cpanel, with a subdomain set to *. ( I believe there may be an .htaccess element to it as well.) Since there are so many different server configurations, my best advice would be to consult your hosting company and seek their advice.

        Otherwise, proper absolute canonicals (with full URLs) on every page should act as a backup safety solution.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • JohnPeters
          JohnPeters @Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

          Hi Cyrus,

          Thanks for taking the time to reply, really appreciated.

          Yes understood, I shouldnt be worried about these strange link urls.

          But I am now concerned about the behavior of my site in the way when you type in say http://www.dwww.mysite.com, it doesn't give you a 404 or missing page, it shows the home page.

          Ive checked my other sites and added characters after the www. and most either redirect to home page or show a page not found.

          Any ideas why this isnt happening on this site? Is it the htaccess?

          Cyrus-Shepard 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Cyrus-Shepard
            Cyrus-Shepard last edited by

            Hi John,

            You hit the nail on the head when you asked - "What's going on?"

            My big question is: do these links actually exist? You said they are coming from one of your other sites, so can you actually visit those pages and find the links?

            If you can't, and if other reporting tools don't show those links, then it's possible it's a fluke with the Majestic crawlers. Almost all crawlers (including SEOmoz and even Google) sometimes have trouble parsing javascript or other pieces of code on a site and create phantom links and URLs. Usually these get sorted out and are of little consequence, but occasionally a few slip into reports.

            I highly suspect something like that is going on in this situation. I would check both Open Site Explorer and Google Webmaster Tools to see if they show these links. Most likely you have nothing to worry about.

            Also, since these links don't appear to come from real pages, there's no value in redirecting them.

            Let me know what you find. If these are indeed real links worthy of saving, then we can start to discuss redirecting them.

            Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

            JohnPeters 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • JohnPeters
              JohnPeters last edited by

              Now there are over 500 links coming from strange URLS

              Really need some help

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • JohnPeters
                JohnPeters last edited by

                Any body any ideas?

                Having no luck at all

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • kirin44355

                  Mass URL changes and redirecting those old URLS to the new. What is SEO Risk and best practices?

                  Hello good people of the MOZ community, I am looking to do a mass edit of URLS on content pages within our sites. The way these were initially setup was to be unique by having the date in the URL which was a few years ago and can make evergreen content now seem dated. The new URLS would follow a better folder path style naming convention and would be way better URLS overall. Some examples of the **old **URLS would be https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-9-17-2012,default,pg.html
                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates/buying-guide-11-13-2012,default,pg.html
                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates/buying-guide-9-3-2012,default,pg.html
                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates/buying-guide-7-19-2012,default,pg.html The new URLS would look like this which would be a great improvement https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Kids-Inline-Skates,default,pg.html
                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Inline-Hockey-Skates,default,pg.html
                  https://www.inlineskates.com/Learn/Buying-Guide-for-Aggressive-Skates,default,pg.html My worry is that we do rank fairly well organically for some of the content and don't want to anger the google machine. The way I would be doing the process would be to edit the URLS to the new layout, then do the redirect for them and push live. Is there a great SEO risk to doing this? 
                  Is there a way to do a mass "Fetch as googlebot" to reindex these if I do say 50 a day? I only see the ability to do 1 URL at a time in the webmaster backend. 
                  Is there anything else I am missing? I believe this change would overall be good in the long run but do not want to take a huge hit initially by doing something incorrectly. This would be done on 5- to a couple hundred links across various sites I manage. Thanks in advance,
                  Chris Gorski

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirin44355
                  0
                • McTaggart

                  Strange 404s in Screaming Frog

                  I just ran a website (Drupal) through screaming frog and the only 404s I found related to web pages which were the same as URLs already used on the website plus the company phone number so... www.company.com/[their phone number] - www.company.com/services[their phone number] - any ideas what might be causing this problem?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                  0
                • Ideas-Money-Art

                  What are partial urls and why this is causing a sitemap error?

                  Hi mozzers, I have a client that recorded 7 errors when generating Xml sitemap. One of the errors appear to be coming from partial urls and apparently I would need to exclude them from sitemap. What are they exactly and why would they cause an error in the sitemap. Thanks!

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art
                  0
                • dellamoda

                  Overly-Dynamic URL

                  Hi, We have over 5000 pages showing under Overly-Dynamic URL error Our ecommerce site uses Ajax and we have several different filters like, Size, Color, Brand and we therefor have many different urls like, http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Pumps.html?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y http://www.dellamoda.com/Designer-Accessories.html?sort=title&use_selected_filter=Y&view=all http://www.dellamoda.com/designer-handbags.html?use_selected_filter=Y&option=manufacturer%3A&page3 Could we use the robots.txt file to disallow these from showing as duplicate content? and do we need to put the whole url in there? like: Disallow: /*?sort=price&sort_direction=1&use_selected_filter=Y if not how far into the url should be disallowed? So far we have added the following to our robots,txt Disallow: /?sort=title Disallow: /?use_selected_filter=Y Disallow: /?sort=price Disallow: /?clearall=Y Just not sure if they are correct. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,Kami

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dellamoda
                  2
                • Deepti_C

                  Google News URL Structure

                  Hi there folks I am looking for some guidance on Google News URLs. We are restructuring the site. A main traffic driver will be the traffic we get from Google News. Most large publishers use: www.site.com/news/12345/this-is-the-title/ Others use www.example.com/news/celebrity/12345/this-is-the-title/ etc. www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ www.example.com/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ (Celebrity is a channel on Google News so should we try and follow that format?) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title/12345/ www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title-12345/ (unique ID no at the end and part of the title URL) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ Others include the date. So as you can see there are so many combinations and there doesnt seem to be any unity across news sites for this format. Have you any advice on how to structure these URLs? Particularly if we want to been seen as an authority on the following topics: fashion, hair, beauty, and celebrity news - in particular "celebrity name" So should the celebrity news section be www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ or what? This is for a completely new site build. Thanks Barry

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deepti_C
                  0
                • Celts18

                  How to deal with old, indexed hashbang URLs?

                  I inherited a site that used to be in Flash and used hashbang URLs (i.e.  www.example.com/#!page-name-here).  We're now off of Flash and have a "normal" URL structure that looks something like this:  www.example.com/page-name-here Here's the problem:  Google still has thousands of the old hashbang (#!) URLs in its index.  These URLs still work because the web server doesn't actually read anything that comes after the hash.  So, when the web server sees this URL  www.example.com/#!page-name-here, it basically renders this page www.example.com/# while keeping the full URL structure intact  (www.example.com/#!page-name-here).  Hopefully, that makes sense.  So, in Google you'll see this URL indexed (www.example.com/#!page-name-here), but if you click it you essentially are taken to our homepage content (even though the URL isn't exactly the canonical homepage URL...which s/b www.example.com/). My big fear here is a duplicate content penalty for our homepage.  Essentially, I'm afraid that Google is seeing thousands of versions of our homepage.  Even though the hashbang URLs are different, the content (ie. title, meta descrip, page content) is exactly the same for all of them. Obviously, this is a typical SEO no-no.  And, I've recently seen the homepage drop like a rock for a search of our brand name which has ranked #1 for months.  Now, admittedly we've made a bunch of changes during this whole site migration, but this #! URL problem just bothers me. I think it could be a major cause of our homepage tanking for brand queries. So, why not just 301 redirect all of the #! URLs?  Well, the server won't accept traditional 301s for the #! URLs because the # seems to screw everything up (server doesn't acknowledge what comes after the #). I "think" our only option here is to try and add some 301 redirects via Javascript. Yeah, I know that spiders have a love/hate (well, mostly hate) relationship w/ Javascript, but I think that's our only resort.....unless, someone here has a better way? If you've dealt with hashbang URLs before, I'd LOVE to hear your advice on how to deal w/ this issue. Best, -G

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Celts18
                  0
                • AndreVanKets

                  Is it safe to redirect multiple URLs to a single URL?

                  Hi, I have an old Wordress website with about 300-400 original pages of content on it. All relating to my company's industry: travel in Africa. It's a legitimate site with travel stories, photos, advice etc. Nothing spammy about. No adverts on it. No affiliates. The site hasn't been updated for a couple of years and we no longer have a need for it. Many of the stories on it are quite out of date. The site has built up a modest Mozrank value over the last 5 years, and has a few hundreds organically achieved inbound links. Recently I set up a swanky new branded website on ExpressionEngine on a new domain. My intention is to: Shut down the old site Focus all attention on building up content on the new website Ask the people linking to the old site to my new site instead (I wonder how many will actually do so...) Where possible, setup a 301 redirect from pages on the old site to their closest match on the new site Setup a 301 redirect from the old site's home page to new site's homepage Sounds good, right? But there is one issue I need some advice on... The old site has about 100 pages that do not have a good match on the new site. These pages are outdated or inferior quality, so it doesn't really make sense to rewrite them and put them on the new site. I call these my "black sheep pages". So... for these "black sheep pages" should I (A) redirect the urls to the new site's homepage (B) redirect the urls the old site's home page (which in turn, redirects to the new site's homepage, or (C) not redirect the urls, and let them die a lonely 404 death? OPTION A: oldsite.com/page1.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page2.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page3.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page4.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page5.php -> newsite.com
                  oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION B: oldsite.com/page1.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page2.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page3.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page4.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com/page5.php -> oldsite.com
                  oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION 😄 oldsite.com/page1.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com/page2.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com/page3.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com/page4.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com/page5.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                  oldsite.com -> newsite.com My intuition tells me that Option A would pass the most "link juice" to my new site, but I am concerned that it could also be seen by Google as a spammy redirect technique. What would you do? Help 😐

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndreVanKets
                  1
                • AU-SEO

                  Brackets in a URL String

                  Was talking with a friend about this the other day. Do Brackets and or Braces in a URL string impact SEO? (I know short human readable etc... but for the sake of conversation has anyone relaised any impacts of these particular Characters in a URL?

                  Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AU-SEO
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.