undefined
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
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • 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.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • 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
    • 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.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • 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. Technical SEO
  4. 403 forbidden error how to solve them

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.

403 forbidden error how to solve them

Technical SEO
2
4
3.8k
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.
  • ClaireH-184886
    ClaireH-184886 last edited by Jul 5, 2013, 8:22 AM

    hi, i have been using a great tool today called screaming frog which was shown to me by Thomas Zickell

    when i used the tool i found some worrying things for my site www.in2town.co.uk. what i have found is, i have a large number of 403 forbidden status on my home page and i do not know why

    here is an example

    http://www.in2town.co.uk/emmerdale/emmerdale-debbie-hits-rock-bottom

    it loads fine but on the tool it shows it as an error and shows it as having no meta tags or anything but there is meta tags in there

    can anyone please let me know how to solve this and why it has happened

    many thanks

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • LynnPatchett
      LynnPatchett last edited by Jul 5, 2013, 9:47 AM Jul 5, 2013, 9:47 AM

      Hi Tim,

      Glad it helped. It might be worth asking your host what kind of features they have for preventing flooding attacks, there are various ways of addressing them on the server side that most hosts will have enabled in one way or another. Unless you have a specific issue with these kind of attacks, it seems to me that this part of the module is causing more harm than good as it is now.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • ClaireH-184886
        ClaireH-184886 @LynnPatchett last edited by Jul 5, 2013, 9:32 AM Jul 5, 2013, 9:32 AM

        thank you for this. i have turned it off and will speak to sh404sef to find out what they can do about it, as i am worried about having the security feature, but as you said that was the problem and now the site is showing fine, there are no errors showing.

        many thanks for this. I hope other people who are having this problem get to read this post as they must be going through what i am going through. many thanks for all your help and the solution

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • LynnPatchett
          LynnPatchett last edited by Jul 5, 2013, 9:29 AM Jul 5, 2013, 8:43 AM

          Hi Tim,

          Did you ever get to the bottom of the issue mentioned in this question? It is almost certainly the same problem.

          Have a look at this page and try either turning of the sh404SEF anti flooding feature or else boosting the max number of requests allowed. http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?p=1368937

          The anti flooding part of this component is basically blocking requests for pages if it thinks someone is trying to do a dos attack on your site. The current setup seems to be too sensitive and is bloocking screaming frog after the first few requests, quite possibly blocking the google bots, maybe blocking the moz crawler also, so certainly something you should address.

          ClaireH-184886 1 Reply Last reply Jul 5, 2013, 9:32 AM Reply Quote 2
          • 1 / 1
          1 out of 4
          • First post
            1/4
            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

          • woshea

            Google Search Console Showing 404 errors for product pages not in sitemap?

            search console 404 error 404s

            We have some products with url changes over the past several months. Google is showing these as having 404 errors even though they are not in sitemap (sitemap shows the correct NEW url). Is this expected? Will these errors eventually go away/stop being monitored by Google?

            Technical SEO | Sep 29, 2023, 7:54 PM | woshea
            0
          • mfrgolfgti

            How to get rid of bot verification errors

            crawl errors 4xx error

            I have a client who sells highly technical products and has lots and lots (a couple of hundred) pdf datasheets that can be downloaded from their website. But in order to download a datasheet, a user has to register on the site. Once they are registered, they can download whatever they want (I know this isn't a good idea but this wasn't set up by us and is historical). On doing a Moz crawl of the site, it came up with a couple of hundred 401 errors. When I investigated, they are all pages where there is a button to click through to get one of these downloads. The Moz error report calls the error "Bot verification". My questions are:
            Are these really errors?
            If so, what can I do to fix them?
            If not, can I just tell Moz to ignore them or will this cause bigger problems?

            Technical SEO | Sep 9, 2021, 10:12 PM | mfrgolfgti
            0
          • Taiger

            ?_escaped_fragment_= Duplicate error in Webmaster

            Hi I am not sure where this came from ... ?escaped_fragment= But in webmaster we are seeing hundreds of pages with this and thus webmaster is saying that we have Pages with duplicate title tags How do I fix this, or remove it. Regards T

            Technical SEO | Apr 26, 2016, 3:21 PM | Taiger
            0
          • A_Fotografy

            Yoast SEO. After set up 404 error pages

            Hello all, Something strange happened with my blog site. I recently signed to MOZ tools. Initially everything was fine, but during my last crawl I got loads of 404
            pages. Few days ago I was tweaking some settings in SEO plugin according to this post https://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success What I noticed was that 404 pages were coming from my blog posts, but for
            some reason category was missing in those posts. For example this link is 404
            https://a-fotografy.co.uk/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailie The one with category is https://a-fotografy.co.uk/wedding-pictures/inchcolm-island-wedding-photography-bailie/ So basically for some reason category was missing. Please let me know how can I fix this instead of doing hundreds of
            redirects now. Thank you,
            Regards,
            Armands

            Technical SEO | Feb 14, 2016, 3:53 PM | A_Fotografy
            0
          • MissVe

            Is there a way of changing the Permalink without getting the 404 Error?

            Hi, I am new to this all.. Is there a way of changing the permalink for example from: domain/content/ to domain/profile/ without receiving the 404 error message. It's just that since my website has been developed, some pages and their content have changed but the permalink still shows the name of the old page which may be confusing. Ps. Please use most simple language for explanations as I am really new to it. Thank you! Ve

            Technical SEO | Mar 15, 2013, 1:54 AM | MissVe
            0
          • mistat2000

            500 Server Error on RSS Feed

            Hi there, I am getting multiple 500 errors on my RSS feed. Here is the error: <dt>Title</dt> <dd>500 : Error</dd> <dt>Meta Description</dt> <dd>Traceback (most recent call last): File "build/bdist.linux-x86_64/egg/downpour/init.py", line 391, in _error failure.raiseException() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/twisted/python/failure.py", line 370, in raiseException raise self.type, self.value, self.tb Error: 500 Internal Server Error</dd> <dt>Meta Robots</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> <dt>Meta Refresh</dt> <dd>Not present/empty</dd> Any ideas as to why this is happening, they are valid feeds?

            Technical SEO | Aug 27, 2012, 6:13 PM | mistat2000
            0
          • potpiegirl

            4XX Errors - Adding %5c%5c to Links

            Hi all  😃 Hope someone can help me with this. The internal links on my hubby's business site occasionally break and add %5c%5c%5c endlessly to the end of the url - like this: site.com/about/hours-of-operation/\\\\\\\\% I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is doing this and while it has happened to me from time to time, I can't recreate it. My crawl diagnostics here in my SEOMox campaign show 19-20 urls doing this - it's nuts. Any insight? Thank you!! Jennifer ~PotPieGirl

            Technical SEO | May 31, 2012, 3:18 PM | potpiegirl
            0
          • MaartenvandenBos

            403 forbidden error website

            Hi Mozzers, I got a question about new website from a new costumer http://www.eindexamensite.nl/. There is a 403 forbidden error on it, and I can't find what the problem is. I have checked on: http://gsitecrawler.com/tools/Server-Status.aspx
            result:
            URL=http://www.eindexamensite.nl/ **Result code: 403 (Forbidden / Forbidden)** When I delete the .htaccess from the server there is a 200 OK :-). So it is in the .htaccess. .htaccess code: ErrorDocument 404 /error.html RewriteEngine On
            RewriteRule ^home$ / [L]
            RewriteRule ^typo3$ - [L]
            RewriteRule ^typo3/.$ - [L]
            RewriteRule ^uploads/.$ - [L]
            RewriteRule ^fileadmin/.$ - [L]
            RewriteRule ^typo3conf/.$ - [L]
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
            RewriteRule .* index.php Start rewrites for Static file caching RewriteRule ^(typo3|typo3temp|typo3conf|t3lib|tslib|fileadmin|uploads|screens|showpic.php)/ - [L]
            RewriteRule ^home$ / [L] Don't pull *.xml, *.css etc. from the cache RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..xml$
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..css$
            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^.*.php$ Check for Ctrl Shift reload RewriteCond %{HTTP:Pragma} !no-cache
            RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cache-Control} !no-cache NO backend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !be_typo_user [NC] NO frontend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !nc_staticfilecache [NC] We only redirect GET requests RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} GET We only redirect URI's without query strings RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ We only redirect if a cache file actually exists RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html -f
            RewriteRule .* typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html [L] End static file caching DirectoryIndex index.html CMS is typo3. any ideas? Thanks!
            Maarten

            Technical SEO | Oct 1, 2012, 8:27 AM | MaartenvandenBos
            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
          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.