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.
Generating 404 Errors but the Pages Exist
-
Hey
I have recently come across an issue with several of a sites urls being seen as a 404 by bots such as Xenu, SEOMoz, Google Web Tools etc. The funny thing is, the pages exist and display fine.
This happens on many of the pages which use the Modx CMS, but the index is fine. The wordpress blog in /blog/ all works fine.
The only thing I can think of is that I have a conflict in the htaccess, but troubleshooting this is difficult, any tool I have found online seem useless.
Have tried to rollback to previous versions but still does not work.
Anyone had any experience of similar issues?
Many thanks
K.
-
FYI, we finally found our error. The short URL turned out to be the same name as the folder (photo-gallery) so once this was changed, wordpress was able to access the correct path. A bit of custom javascript had to be amended as well, but that was limited to our custom code. Using your web-sniffer.net link we were able to test immediately and fix it fairly quickly. Thank you for your help!
-
That's true Ryan I guess it is coding related really.
Issues like this are a real pain in the ass. And most people don't even check WMT to realise the issues exist. TBH, I don't check as often as I should.
-
I agree with you Paul.
As you pointed out one possible cause is a CMS-related issue which I would refer to as "coding" meaning something in the code which was used to present the website. Perhaps there is a better way to phrase it but nothing comes to mind at the moment.
Another possibility you mentioned is Litespeed which would be a server-side issue directly. Either way, it is a legitimate issue which should be addressed.
-
FWIW, I don't think it's a coding issue. If it were coding, it would either show a 200OK or it would show a 404. It wouldn't sometimes serve a 404.
If you're using Litespeed, I'd guarantee that is the issue and if you're using Joomla, it's another prime culprit.
-
Please keep in mind, that 404 error does not mean the page doesn't exist. It means your server, is sending a response code to indicate that it doesn't exist.
When I installed Litespeed on my server, this issue happened over and over again.
I believe Joomla for example, has some kind of security module that serves a 404 if a single IP requests a page too many times. I remember running SEOFrog on a friends Joomla site and tons of 404's were showing up.
-
Dev team are looking into it, must be quite a complex htaccess issue. Will get to the bottom of it this week and post any findings.
-
Thanks Ryan! I will get it looked at...Sue
-
@DentalID, the same reply I offered to Guy applies for you as well. This is an SEO issue which does need to be fixed. Something on your end is causing the page to show with a 403 response code. You really need a programmer to get in there and determine the root cause of the issue. You could try asking your web host if you have managed hosting, but this level of assistance would normally be outside the support of managed hosting.
-
Guy,
In looking at the page this appears to be a legitimate problem. Your server settings allow you to present a page with any header code you wish. You can 301 a page but still present the page with a 200 code if you want. Presently it appears the page is being presented fine but your server is offering a 404 header code.
I can't tell the actual source of the problem other then to say it appears to be on your end and should be fixed. I originally looked at the code with the MOZbar but then checked independently with another tool as well. http://web-sniffer.net/
All tools show a 404 header code for the page. This response code is generated by your web server.
-
We are having a similar problem with this URL: http://dentalimplantsportland.com/photo-gallery/ and also the following locations:
http://cosmeticdentistportland.net/photo-gallery/
http://dentalveneersportland.com/photo-gallery/
SEO Moz and Google webmaster tools show it as a 403 error but the pages display fine. I am not able to tell if this is really a problem for SEO or if we should reconstruct this gallery system and would really love your input.
This is Wordpress with a Spry gallery...
Thanks so much!
-
It is just a small affiliate site I am looking at - this page creates a 404.
http://www.insure-uk.com/post-office-car-insurance.html
Currently testing on some beta servers. Hopefully should fix soon as otherwise it will lose indexation.
-
I also see this now and again, but next crawl they fix themselfs. i assume robots can not always reach page for a number of reasons
-
Can you offer an example of a URL which is causing this problem?
-
I have had the same issues, I think it is often the bot's problem
Just to be certain check your links are correct and manually test them. Also ensure your sitemap is up to date and that you are not blocking the crawlers with metarobots, robots.txt, or some weird stuff in htaccess.
I have found that renaming pages or moving them will often cause 404 issues with crawlers
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
-
Paginated Pages Which Shouldnt' Exist..
Hi I have paginated pages on a crawl which shouldn't be paginated: https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs My crawl shows: <colgroup><col width="377"></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=2 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=3 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=4 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=5 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=6 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=7 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=8 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=9 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=10 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=11 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=12 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=13 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=14 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=15 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=16 |
| https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=17 | Where is this coming from? Thank you0 -
Redirecting homepage to internal page (2nd Tier page)
We are planning to experiment redirecting our homepage to one of the 2nd tier page. I mean....example.com to example.com/page. We need this page to rank well, but it doesn't have much internal links or external back-links, so we opt for this redirect. Advantage with this page is, it has "keyword" we want to rank for in URL. "page" in example.com/page. Will this help or hurt us in SEO? I think we are missing keyword in our root domain, so interested to highlight this page. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Thousands of 503 errors in GSC for pages not important to organic search - Is this a problem?
Hi, folks A client of mine now has roughly 30 000 503-errors (found in the crawl error section of GSC). This is mostly pages with limited offers and deals. The 503 error seems to occur when the offers expire, and when the page is of no use anymore. These pages are not important for organic search, but gets traffic from direct and newsletters, mostly. My question:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
Does having a high number of 503 pages reported in GSC constitute a problem in terms of organic ranking for the domain and the category and product pages (the pages that I want to rank for organically)? If it does, what is the best course of action to mitigate the problem? Looking excitingly forward to your answers to this 🙂 Sigurd0 -
PDF or HTML Page?
One of our sales team members has created a 25 page word document as a topical page. The plan was to make this into an html page with a table of contents. My thoughts were why not make it a pdf? Is there any con to using a PDF vs an html page? If the PDF was properly optimized would it perform just as well? The goal is to have folks click back to our products and hopefully by after reading about how they work.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika220 -
404 Errors with my RSS Feed/sitemap
In my google webmasters I just started getting 404 errors that I'm not sure how to redirect. I'm getting quite a few that are ending in /feed/ for instance /nyc-accident-injury/feed/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jsmythd
contact-us-thank-you/feed/ and then also a problem with my sitemap I guess? With /site-map/?postsort=tags The domain is pulversthompson.com0 -
Does an H1 have to be at the top of a page?
Because H1 "may" carry some weight with Google does it have to be placed at the top of the page? Can I place it towards the bottom of the page instead in normal body size? My goal is to keep the main keywords in the H1 but create a much friendlier title for the customer to read at the top of the page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0 -
External 404 vs Internal 404
Which one is bad? External - when someone adds an incorrect link to your site, maybe does a typo when linking to an inner page. This page never existed on your site, google shows this as a 404 in Webmaster tools. Internal - a page existed, google indexed it, and you deleted it and didnt add a 301. Internal ones are in the webmaster's control, and i can understand if google gets upset if it sees a 404 for a URL that existed before, however surely "externally created" 404 shoudnt cause any harm cause that page never existed. And someone has inserted an incorrect link to your site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamBuck0