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
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • 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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • 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.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • 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.

      • 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. 4XX Errors - Adding %5c%5c to Links

    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.

    4XX Errors - Adding %5c%5c to Links

    Technical SEO
    3
    7
    2575
    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.
    • potpiegirl
      potpiegirl last edited by

      Hi all  😃

      Hope someone can help me with this.

      The internal links on my hubby's business site occasionally break and add %5c%5c%5c endlessly to the end of the url - like this:

      site.com/about/hours-of-operation/\\\\\\\\%

      I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is doing this and while it has happened to me from time to time, I can't recreate it.

      My crawl diagnostics here in my SEOMox campaign show 19-20 urls doing this - it's nuts.

      Any insight?

      Thank you!!

      Jennifer

      ~PotPieGirl

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • potpiegirl
        potpiegirl @irvingw last edited by

        Both Shane and I looked and neither of saw any / vs \ issues.

        Then, I just took a peek at my source code and look what I saw:

        http://screencast.com/t/y02R4RS2L

        Think that is it?

        Thanks for replying!

        Jennifer

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • potpiegirl
          potpiegirl @potpiegirl last edited by

          Sent you a PM, Shane - thanks so much for the offer!

          By "occasionally break", I mean that every now and again, any link on the site will freak out and add the %5c jibberish to the end.

          Jennifer

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Jinx14678
            Jinx14678 @potpiegirl last edited by

            It would really have to be....

            The only reason for a %5C is the use of backslash - as that is actually what it means in code.

            **business site occasionally break **

            How do you mean "break" ?

            My crawl diagnostics here in my SEOMox campaign show 19-20 urls doing this - it's nuts.

            Is the only issue from this in SEOMOZ reports?

            If you would like to PM me the site I can attempt to profile it

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • potpiegirl
              potpiegirl @Jinx14678 last edited by

              Thanks for replying so quickly, Shane!

              I don't believe it's a / vs \ issue.  It's a wordpress site.  Key pages are in the top nav bar (all urls correct) and all the side bar links are 'widgets' and created by Wordpress.

              For some reason I am suspecting a theme issue, but if I can't recreate the error, I'll have no way of knowing if changing the theme solves the problem.

              Site has been online since 2010 with no issues...this is a new issue (past couple months according to crawl diagnostics).

              Thanks!!!

              Jinx14678 potpiegirl 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • irvingw
                irvingw last edited by

                somewhere in your url coding you added backslash instead of slash which is not valid.

                potpiegirl 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • Jinx14678
                  Jinx14678 last edited by

                  It appears from research it is actually \   (backslash)  not / (slash)

                  So possibly somewhere in your site you have used \ instead of /  but of course this is just a possibility, as it appears that %5C is the delimiter or interpretation of \ in original Unix.

                  Hope this helps

                  PS a quick check at http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp verified %5c is URL encode, for backslash - as it is treated as a special character, so somewhere in your CMS or code, you have used backslash instead of slash.

                  potpiegirl 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

                  • Liggins

                    Updating inbound links vs. 301 redirecting the page they link to

                    Hi everyone, I'm preparing myself for a website redesign and finding conflicting information about inbound links and 301 redirects. If I have a URL (we'll say website.com/website) that is linked to by outside sources, should I get those outside sources to update their links when I change the URL to website.com/webpage? Or is it just as effective from a link juice perspective to simply 301 redirect the old page to the new page? Are there any other implications to this choice that I may want to consider? Thanks!

                    Technical SEO | | Liggins
                    0
                  • Indiatravelz

                    How to fix broken links?

                    Hi, I use WordPress CMS with Yoast SEO plugin.  I have just found out that my 403 errors increased dramatically. It seems that all my tags below of each post are being broken for some reason. When i click on the tags i get the following massage: **403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules. ** I assume it has something to do with the configuration within Yoast SEO plugin. Dose anyone know how should i fix that? Thanks, Raviv evsGujA

                    Technical SEO | | Indiatravelz
                    0
                  • TheKrazyCouponLady

                    429 Errors?

                    I have over 500,000 429 errors in webmaster tools. Do I need to be concerned about these errors?

                    Technical SEO | | TheKrazyCouponLady
                    0
                  • greenfoxone

                    Dofollow and Nofollow links

                    What is the difference between dofollow and nofollow links? I know that some sites/blogs only let you post nofollow links. In such a case how do I know if a comment I posted on a certain site will be a nofollow or dofollow? How about big traffic sites such as Huff Post. Do they only allow nofollow links?

                    Technical SEO | | greenfoxone
                    0
                  • ShopChameleon

                    404 Errors After Site Migration

                    Hello - I'm working on a website selling fashion accessories.  The site just went through a site migration from Yahoo! to Big Commerce.  Now we have a high level of warnings and errors from the crawl.  Few are mentioning sites I never seen before on the Yahoo! platform. I also notice that the pages crawled has doubled.  How can I fix or did I do something wrong with migration? I was running the website with minimal errors and now overwhelmed with errors all the error updates.  If I can get some assistance on what could be wrong, I would greatly appreciate. Thanks.

                    Technical SEO | | ShopChameleon
                    0
                  • EwanFisher

                    International Site Links In Footer

                    We have several international sites and we have them linked in the footer of our main .com site . Should we add "nofollow" to these links? Our concern is that Google could see these sites as a network?

                    Technical SEO | | EwanFisher
                    0
                  • MaartenvandenBos

                    403 forbidden error website

                    Hi Mozzers, I got a question about new website from a new costumer http://www.eindexamensite.nl/. There is a 403 forbidden error on it, and I can't find what the problem is. I have checked on: http://gsitecrawler.com/tools/Server-Status.aspx
                    result:
                    URL=http://www.eindexamensite.nl/ **Result code: 403 (Forbidden / Forbidden)** When I delete the .htaccess from the server there is a 200 OK :-). So it is in the .htaccess. .htaccess code: ErrorDocument 404 /error.html RewriteEngine On
                    RewriteRule ^home$ / [L]
                    RewriteRule ^typo3$ - [L]
                    RewriteRule ^typo3/.$ - [L]
                    RewriteRule ^uploads/.$ - [L]
                    RewriteRule ^fileadmin/.$ - [L]
                    RewriteRule ^typo3conf/.$ - [L]
                    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-l
                    RewriteRule .* index.php Start rewrites for Static file caching RewriteRule ^(typo3|typo3temp|typo3conf|t3lib|tslib|fileadmin|uploads|screens|showpic.php)/ - [L]
                    RewriteRule ^home$ / [L] Don't pull *.xml, *.css etc. from the cache RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..xml$
                    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^..css$
                    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !^.*.php$ Check for Ctrl Shift reload RewriteCond %{HTTP:Pragma} !no-cache
                    RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cache-Control} !no-cache NO backend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !be_typo_user [NC] NO frontend user is logged in. RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !nc_staticfilecache [NC] We only redirect GET requests RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} GET We only redirect URI's without query strings RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$ We only redirect if a cache file actually exists RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html -f
                    RewriteRule .* typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/%{HTTP_HOST}/%{REQUEST_URI}/index.html [L] End static file caching DirectoryIndex index.html CMS is typo3. any ideas? Thanks!
                    Maarten

                    Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
                    0
                  • Aspedia

                    Add to Cart Link

                    We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>

                    Technical SEO | | Aspedia
                    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
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation 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
                  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.