4xx (not found) errors seem spurious, caused by a "\" added to the URL
-
Hi SEOmoz folks
We're getting a lot of 404 (not found) errors in our weekly crawl.
However the weird thing is that the URLs in question all have the same issue.
They are all a valid URL with a backsalsh ("") added. In URL encoding, this is an extra %5C at the end of the URL.
Even weirder, we do not have any such URLs in our (Wordpress-based) website.
Any insight on how to get rid of this issue?
Thanks
-
No, Google Webmaster tools do not list an error here.
Its indeed an SEOmoz bug. Ryan, thanks for trying though!
-
My request is for a real link that I can click on and view the page.
In most cases where someone described an issue to me, either a key piece of information was left out or missed. If you cannot share that information, I understand. In the interest of being helpful, I wanted to ask.
It is entirely possible this is a crawler issue, but it is also possible the crawler is functioning perfectly and Google's crawler will produce the same result. That is my concern.
-
Well actualy I did already. The example I gave above is exactly that, only I replaced the real URL with "URL".
In a bit greater detail, the referring page is actually URL1 and this page contains the javascript
item = '
- text';
which produces 404 errors for URL2 in the SEOmoz crawl report.
-
It is entirely possible the issue is with the SEOmoz crawler. I would like to see it improved as well.
I am concerned the root issue may actually be with your site. Would you be willing to share an example of a link which is flagged in your report along with the referring page?
-
Thanks for the tips. After drilling down on the referer, this looks like an SEOmoz bug.
We are using a wordpress plugin called "collapsing archives" which creates LEGAL archive links with a javascript snippet like this:
item = '
- text';
As you can see this is totally legal javascript. But it seems SEOmoz is scanning the javascript without interpretation and picking up the escaped quotation mark ' after the URL and interpreting it as an additional \ at the end of the URL.
Since the plugin is behaving legally and works well - we want to keep using it. What's the chance that SEOmoz will fix the bug?
-
Many people do not realize when you add the backslash character, you change the URL. You can actually present a different web page for the URL with the trailing slash.
A popular cause of the problem is linking. If you check your weekly crawl report, there will be a column called Referrer. That is the source of the link. Check the referring page and find the link. Fix the link (i.e. remove the trailing slash) and the problem will go away on the next crawl. Of course, you want to determine how the link appeared and ensure it doesn't happen again.
-
If I had to have a guess I'd look into any javascript on the page that is perhaps adding or pointing to the URL with backslash.
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
-
Difference between urls and referring urls?
Sorry, nit new to this side of SEO We recently discovered we have over 200 critical crawler issues on our site (mainly 4xx) We exported the CSV and it shows both a URL link and a referring URL. Both lead to a 'page not found' so I have two questions? What is the difference between a URL and a referring URL? What is the best practice/how do we fix this issue? Is it one for our web developer? Appreciate the help.
Moz Pro | | ayrutd1 -
Getting a URL Unaccessible on the page grader
I'm optimizing a site for a financial advisor, here is the site: http://www.mattkeenancfp.com I am getting the message "that URL is unaccessible" when I try to use the on-page grader. This is an emerald website too, I'm not sure if that has any effect on anything though.
Moz Pro | | ryanbilak0 -
My site's domain authority is 1\. why is that
Hi Guys My website's domain authority is 1 no matter i try www or non www.. why is that? can you guys please help? Thanks a lot in advance. http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=autoproject.com.au
Moz Pro | | JazzJack
http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.autoproject.com.au Jazz0 -
SEOmoz showing crawl errors but webmastertools says no errors, need help!
Hi this is my first question and i couldnt find a similar question on here. basically i have a clients website that is showing 150 duplicate page titles and content errors plus others. SEOmoz analysis is showing me for example is 3 duplicate hompage URLS: 1.www.domain.com 2.domain.com 3.www.domain.com/index.html all 3 are the same page. after explaining to the guy (who built the website) the errors, he ensured me that the main URL is URl 1. and the other 2 are 301 redirects. however SEOmoz analysis doesnt seem to change the results and webmastertools doesnt seem to show any errors at all. also if i try all 3 URL's there are no redirects to URL 1. any help or clarity would be awesome! Thanks e-bob
Moz Pro | | bobsnowzell0 -
About Duplicate Content found by SEOMOZ... that is not duplicate
Hi folks, I am hunting for duplicate content based on SEOMOZ great tool for that 🙂 I have some pages that are mentioned as duplicate but I cant say why. They are video page. The content is minimalistic so I guess it might be because all the navigation is the same but for instance http://www.nuxeo.com/en/resource-center/Videos/Nuxeo-World-2010/Nuxeo-World-2010-Presentation-Thierry-Delprat-CTO and http://www.nuxeo.com/en/resource-center/Videos/Nuxeo-World-2010/Nuxeo-World-2010-Presentation-Cheryl-McKinnon-CMO are mentioned as duplicate. Any idea? Is it hurting? Cheers,
Moz Pro | | nuxeo0 -
Can overly dynamic URLs be overcome with canonical meta tags?
I tried searching for questions regarding dynamic URLs and canonical tags, but I couldn't find anything s hopefully this hasn't been covered. There are a large number of overly dynamic URLs reported in our site crawl (>7,000). I haven't looked at each of these, but most of these either have a canonical meta tag or have are indicated as FOLLOW, NO INDEX pages. Will these be enough to overcome any negative SEO impact that may come from overly dynamic URLs? We are down to almost 0 critical errors and this is now the biggest problem reported by the site crawl after too many on page links.
Moz Pro | | afmaury0 -
Www. part of url not showing on google search results.
When typing in fun translator into google UK, my website www.funtranslator.com is the 18th result on the 2nd page, however, there is an issue, it only shows funtranslator.com, without the www part, which is not what I want because the whole address to show up, because my campaign on seomoz pro and webmaster tools account is www.funtranslator.com not funtranslator.com. How can I resolve this. For not, I have a redirect that goes from funtranslator to www.funtranslator.com I want to know how to get the full www.url into the results instead of just url.com without the www part of the url. Also, will this affect my stats gathered in my campaign on my seomoz pro account?
Moz Pro | | RyanSMurphy1 -
"Special pricing" on SEO DVDs?
The section for buying your dvd training lists the price for everyone at $119 and the special price for pro members at - $119. Then the text says that the special price will be shown when the item is added to the cart where the special price is - $119. Am I missing something here?
Moz Pro | | IanTheScot1