403s: Are There Instances Where 403's Are Common & Acceptable?
-
Hey All,
Both MOZ & Webmaster tools have identified 403 errors on an editorial site I work with (using Drupal CMS). I looked into the errors and the pages triggering the 403 are all articles in draft status that are not being indexed. If I am not logged into our drupal and I try to access an article in draft status I get the 403 forbidden error.
Are these 403's typical for an editorial site where editors may be trying to access an article in draft status while they are not logged in? Webmaster tools is showing roughly 350 pages with the 'Access Denied' 403 status.
Are these harmful to rank?
Thanks!
-
Hi guys and girls,
With regards to this, ss there any problem for SEO that you can see with banning spam refers through Htaccess?
So in these instances when a spam bots comes to the site, we throw a "Forbidden You don't have permission to access / on this server.", so basically a 403 error?
We're considering this as a more permanent solution to using filters in GA.
What do you think?
Thanks,
Gill.
-
Thanks Nicolas & Ruth. I realized the reason the pages are triggering errors is because there are published pages linking to those posts in draft. I imagine those draft posts were live at some point and then put back into draft.
Im guessing if I kill all the links to those draft posts that will fix the issue.
-
I agree that it's probably not a huge problem, but still something to clean up if you can - it would be best if crawlers weren't trying to access these pages.
-
If Moz and Webmaster Tools are showing the 403 error, it means that they are able to crawl to the URLs that are returning the 403 - so somewhere on your site or on the web, pages that are accessible by bots and crawlers are linking to these pages that don't exist yet. Having a bunch of errors on your site can impact Google's ability to crawl it well, which can impact your rankings, so it's best to get those cleaned up. In Webmaster Tools you should be able to click on the pages and see which pages are linking to them, so you can remove those links; you can do the same using a tool like Screaming Frog if you'd prefer. Good luck!
-
Hello,
No problem with these URLs, Drupal returns a 403 correctly because crawlers try to get draft content. Google and other search engines will not penalized you because of that : you can think of cart URLs or account URLs for ecommerce websites that may returns 403 the same way.
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
-
How do I fix 5xx errors on pdf's?
Hi all, I'm having a huge (and very frustrating) issue-- I have 437 pages with 5xx errors and have no idea how to go about fixing them. All of them are links to pdf's, and when I click on the link on the Site Crawl page, it opens just fine. I've been trying to find the answer to how to fix this issue for weeks with no luck at all. I tried linking the pdf's to their parent page, tried renaming the links to be more concise and crawler friendly, and I've searched all types of articles involving pdf's and 5xx errors, all with no luck. Does anyone have any idea why these pages are getting this error and how I can fix them? Huge thanks in advance! Daniela S.
Moz Pro | | laurelleafep0 -
Can someone kindly explain what 'Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags' means? Is this a critical error and how can it be rectified?
Can someone kindly explain what 'Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags' means? Is this a critical error and how can it be rectified?
Moz Pro | | JoshMcLean0 -
Site Not Indexing & SEOMoz Reporting ZERO On-Page Report Crawls
Any help on this would be MUCH appreciated. One of my sites, aironeairsolutionsinc.com, has recently been rebuilt and the pages tweaked for some basic optimization. Based on my experience, those tweaks (geared toward keywords with relatively low competition locally) usually bump my local sites up into the top 20 or 30 at worst. 3 weeks later, it seems my site is still not indexing with Google. In addition, I AM NOTICING THAT THE ON PAGE REPORTS IN SEO MOZ ARE NOT REGISTERING THAT ANY PAGES ARE BEING CRAWLED. Again, any help from Moz staff would be awesome! :} Thanks, Ricky
Moz Pro | | RickyShockley0 -
How to solve duplicate page title & content error
I got lot of errors in Duplicate page title - 5000 Here the result page is same and content is also same,but it differs only with page no in meta title Title missing error In seomoz report i got empty msg - title,meta desc,meta robots,meta refresh But if i check the link which i got error it shows all meta tags..we have added all meta tags in our site..But i dont no why i got title missing error . 404 error In this report,if i click the link which i got error, it goes to main page of our site. But the url differs. eg: The error link is :www.example.com/buy/requirement-2-0-inmumbai-property it automatically goes to www.example.com page Let me know how to solve these issues.
Moz Pro | | Rajesh.Chandran0 -
Can't log into Firefox MozBar
I just downloaded and installed the MozBar for Firefox, but it will not let me login to my account. The Log In button is gray and none of the buttons do anything when I click on them. Please help! Thank you,
Moz Pro | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
Fetch googlebot for sites you don't own?
I've used the "fetch as googlebot" tool in Google webmaster tools to submit links from my site, but I was wondering if there was any type of tool or submission process like this for submitting links from other sites that you do not own? The reason I ask is, I worked for several months to get a website to accept my link as part of their dealer locator tool. The link to my site was published a few months ago, however I don't think google has found it and the reason could be because you have to type in your zip code to get the link to appear. This is the website that I am referencing: http://www.ranchhand.com/dealers.php?zip=78070&radius=20 (my website is www.rangeroffroad.com) Is there any way for Google to index the link? Any ideas?
Moz Pro | | texmeix0 -
Which would you chose? Link on PA56 with 88 OBL's and 80 IBL's or a link on a PA75 with 225 OBL's & 40 IBL (Same Domain)
Which would you chose? Link on PA56 with 88 OBL's and 80 IBL's or a link on a PA75 with 225 OBL's & 40 IBL (Same Domain) Pretty self explanatory. I want to know what metrics SEOMozzers rely on most. If you are not an expert at evaluating links for large scale development please don't muddy the waters on this question with a thin and vague answer.
Moz Pro | | DavidWolf580 -
What's Your SEOmoz Favorite?
Obviously, SEOmoz is full of awesomeness. But I'm curious as to what sections, tools, etc. of SEOmoz are the users' favorites? For me, it's a close race between the blog, Linkscape/Open Site Explorer, and the search overlay tool on the Mozbar. What are your favorites?
Moz Pro | | Gyi0