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
-
Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?
I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
Moved company 'Help Center' from Zendesk to Intercom, got lots of 404 errors. What now?
Howdy folks, excited to be part of the Moz community after lurking for years! I'm a few weeks into my new job (Digital Marketing at Rewind) and about 10 days ago the product team moved our Help Center from Zendesk to Intercom. Apparently the import went smoothly, but it's caused one problem I'm not really sure how to go about solving: https://help.rewind.io/hc/en-us/articles/*** is where all our articles used to sit https://help.rewind.io/*** is where all our articles now are So, for example, the following article has now moved as such: https://help.rewind.io/hc/en-us/articles/115001902152-Can-I-fast-forward-my-store-after-a-rewind- https://help.rewind.io/general-faqs-and-billing/frequently-asked-questions/can-i-fast-forward-my-store-after-a-rewind This has created a bunch of broken URLs in places like our Shopify/BigCommerce app listings, in our email drips, and in external resources etc. I've played whackamole cleaning many of these up, but these old URLs are still indexed by Google – we're up to 475 Crawl Errors in Search Console over the past week, all of which are 404s. I reached out to Intercom about this to see if they had something in place to help, but they just said my "best option is tracking down old links and setting up 301 redirects for those particular addressed". Browsing the Zendesk forms turned up some relevant-ish results, with the leading recommendation being to configure javascript redirects in the Zendesk document head (thread 1, thread 2, thread 3) of individual articles. I'm comfortable setting up 301 redirects on our website, but I'm in a bit over my head in trying to determine how I could do this with content that's hosted externally and sitting on a subdomain. I have access to our Zendesk admin, so I can go in and edit stuff there, but don't have experience with javascript redirects and have read that they might not be great for such a large scale redirection. Hopefully this is enough context for someone to provide guidance on how you think I should go about fixing things (or if there's even anything for me to do) but please let me know if there's more info I can provide. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | henrycabrown1 -
Do 403 Forbidden errors from website pages hurt rankings?
Hi All, I noticed that our website has lot of 403 errors across different pages using the tool http://www.deadlinkchecker.com/. Do these errors hurt website rankings? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Should my back links go to home page or internal pages
Right now we rank on page 2 for many KWs, so should i now focus my attention on getting links to my home page to build domain authority or continue to direct links to the internal pages for specific KWs? I am about to write some articles for several good ranking sites and want to know whether to link my company name (same as domain name) or KW to the home page or use individual KWs to the internal pages - I am only allowed one link per article to my site. Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
Do search engines crawl links on 404 pages?
I'm currently in the process of redesigning my site's 404 page. I know there's all sorts of best practices from UX standpoint but what about search engines? Since these pages are roadblocks in the crawl process, I was wondering if there's a way to help the search engine continue its crawl. Does putting links to "recent posts" or something along those lines allow the bot to continue on its way or does the crawl stop at that point because the 404 HTTP status code is thrown in the header response?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brad-causes0 -
Can too many "noindex" pages compared to "index" pages be a problem?
Hello, I have a question for you: our website virtualsheetmusic.com includes thousands of product pages, and due to Panda penalties in the past, we have no-indexed most of the product pages hoping in a sort of recovery (not yet seen though!). So, currently we have about 4,000 "index" page compared to about 80,000 "noindex" pages. Now, we plan to add additional 100,000 new product pages from a new publisher to offer our customers more music choice, and these new pages will still be marked as "noindex, follow". At the end of the integration process, we will end up having something like 180,000 "noindex, follow" pages compared to about 4,000 "index, follow" pages. Here is my question: can this huge discrepancy between 180,000 "noindex" pages and 4,000 "index" pages be a problem? Can this kind of scenario have or cause any negative effect on our current natural SEs profile? or is this something that doesn't actually matter? Any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. Thank you! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Stuck on Page 2 - What Would You Do?!?
My site is : http://goo.gl/JgK1e My main keyword is : Plastic Bins i have been going back and forth between page 1 and 2 for this keyword and i was wondering if any of you could provide any guidance as to why i can't get on the top of page 1, and stay there... My site has been around for a while, we believe we have a great user experience, all unique, fresh content, and the lowest prices... I must be missing out on something major if I cannot get a steady page 1 ranking... Any thoughts? Thanks in advance...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prime850 -
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