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.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • 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.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      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, are these a problem?

    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, are these a problem?

    Technical SEO
    3
    8
    6728
    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.
    • jtay123
      jtay123 last edited by

      Hi

      I have just run a crawl test on screaming frog and it is showing quite a few 403 forbidden status codes.

      We are showing none of these in webmaster tools, is this an issue?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • SEOExecutive20
        SEOExecutive20 @jtay123 last edited by

        Your welcome! Anytime

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
        • jtay123
          jtay123 @SEOExecutive20 last edited by

          Followed advice ran report again, now 100% 200: OK, really chuffed thanks!

          SEOExecutive20 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • jtay123
            jtay123 @SEOExecutive20 last edited by

            Thanks guys I will get that sorted.

            Still very much a beginner and part time (late nights on our own sites) but this pro membership is proving priceless.

            Really appreciate the help!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • AlanMosley
              AlanMosley @jtay123 last edited by

              SEo Executive is correct. uyou have some flooding protection on

              i doubt very much if you are a target for DOS attacks so get ried of it

              this is how crawlers see your code

              Forbidden access

              (Flooding)

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • SEOExecutive20
                SEOExecutive20 last edited by

                Yes it's an issue and I will help you fix this:

                I noticed you are using sh404sef

                From the back end of your site you will need to go to sh404sef

                Then sh404sef configuration security tab,

                At the bottom, you will find an option below "Anti-flood configuration",  you will need to set "Activate anti-flood" to "No".

                jtay123 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • jtay123
                  jtay123 @AlanMosley last edited by

                  Yes sure.

                  www.lawngrassseed.co.uk

                  AlanMosley 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • AlanMosley
                    AlanMosley last edited by

                    Yes it means the crawler has no permissions to crawl the page.

                    Can we get the domain so we can check, use a tiny url if you dont want it shown

                    jtay123 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • 1 / 1
                    • First post
                      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

                    • SushiUK

                      Problems with WooCommerce Product Attribute Filter URL's

                      I am running a WordPress/WooCommerce site for a client, and Moz is picking up some issues with URL's generated from WooCommerce product attribute filters. For example: ..co.uk/womens-prescription-glasses/?filter_gender=mens&filter_style=full-rim&filter_shape=oval How do I get Google to ignore these filters?
                      I am running Yoast Premium, but not sure if this can solve the issue? Product categories are canonicalised to the root category URL. Any suggestions very gratefully appreciated. Thanks Bob

                      Technical SEO | | SushiUK
                      0
                    • Digital-DMG

                      How big is the problem: 404-errors as result of out of stock products?

                      We had a discussion about the importance of 404-errors as result of products which are out of stock. Of course this is not good, but what is the leverance in terms of importance: low-medium-high?

                      Technical SEO | | Digital-DMG
                      0
                    • TihomirPetrov

                      Www2 vs www problem

                      Hi, I have a website that has an old version and a new version. The content is not duplicate on the different versions.
                      The point is that the old version uses www. and non-www before the domain and the new one uses www2. My questions is: Is that a problem and what should be done? Thank you in advance!

                      Technical SEO | | TihomirPetrov
                      0
                    • ClaireH-184886

                      403 forbidden error how to solve them

                      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

                      Technical SEO | | ClaireH-184886
                      0
                    • danatanseo

                      We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?

                      We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com  - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com  The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators  do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators  but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!

                      Technical SEO | | danatanseo
                      0
                    • edantadis

                      Is it a problem to have a homepage with a slug / URL ?

                      Hi, We are designing a web site for one of our clients, and using a home made CMS. I don't know how this CMS has been built, but anyways, in the end the homepage has a URL format which looks like this : www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html. No www.mydomain.com. Is it dangerous for SEO to have a slug/URL directly on the homepage ? Do you have experiences, cases where it has impacted a site negatively ? The main problem I expect is duplicate content (with Google seeing both www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html as being different pages) but apparently the CMS is doing a 302 redirect from the root domain to the URL (I told my colleague it should at least be a 301). Sorry if this question seems like basic SEO knowledge, but I really can't find a definitive answer on the subject. Thank you very much 🙂

                      Technical SEO | | edantadis
                      0
                    • ocelot

                      Duplicate content problem from an index.php file

                      Hi One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings. The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26 How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc Many Thanks

                      Technical SEO | | ocelot
                      0
                    • Vivamedia

                      Set base-href to subfolders - problems?

                      A customer is using the <base>-tag in an odd way: <base href="http://domain.com/1.0.0/1/1/"> My own theory is that the subfolders are added as the root because of revision control. CSS, images and internal links are used like this:
                      internal link I ran a test with Xenu Link Sleuth and found many broken links on the site, but I can't say if it is due to the base-tag. I have read that the base-tag may cause problems in some browsers, but is this usage of base-tag bad in some SEO-perspective? I have a lot of problems with this customer and I want to know if the base-tag is a part of it.

                      Technical SEO | | Vivamedia
                      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
                    • 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

                    Access all your tools in one place. Whether you're tracking progress or analyzing data, everything you need is at your fingertips.

                    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.