Any idea why this is reporting a 404 in MozTools?
-
I did away with a vague category and 301 redirected the category url to the home page. However the link is reporting as a 404 in Moz Tools when it scans my site. Here's the link, and as you can see it redirects to the home page. Just curious if I did something wrong. Thanks.
-
Totally agree with Ryan, you should redirect https to http
Trivial maybe, but can see no reason not to do it as it takes no effort and makes your site even more accessible to users who mis-type, key your address directly into the url bar while on a https site etc
*This was in response to Ryans post which started "Perhaps i am being too picky..." I accidentally clicked the wrong reply button!!
-
Hi Rick,
While I know that Ryan decided to drop the https:// protocol problem, I just wanted to explain why it could be an issue for you.
It may not be a concern for a lot of personal sites, but for those where the site may be serving a strongly recognized brand it definitely should be a concern. That recognition could be coming both from your online visibility and/or from your involvement in offline communities or activities. Basically, if you have a reputation or following, people who know of your site will be much more likely to type your URL straight into a browser to go there.
I, for example, have come to know and love noahsdad.com through your involvement here in SEOmoz Q&A. I've visited the site, love your work and from time to time it crosses my mind to drop in and see what Noah has been up to lately. Since I know the site's domain, when that happens, I click inside the field at the top of my browser and replace everything after the www of the site that is open with noahsdad.com.
Now, in the event that the page I had open in my browser when I did that happened to be using the https:// protocol and I didn't realize that (which often happens), I would actually be asking my browser to go to https://www.noahsdad.com...and I think now you see why this could be an issue for you.
Hope that helps
Sha
Thumbs up for the catch too Ryan!
-
It could be that MozTools is looking at a cached version . You could try fetching it in Google Webmasters Tool to see how Google sees it ( which is what you should really worry about )
But as far as I can see you have 301 in place for that category to your home page : www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php?submit=submit&url=http://noahsdad.com/mom-md
-
I would need to see the full record from the crawl report in order to respond. Perhaps you can upload the record to a web server and share the link?
-
No worries.
My real question is still why the redirect is showing up as a 404 when the site is crawled. I'd still be interested in figuring that out if you have any thoughts.
Thanks.
-
I am going to let this issue drop since it is such a small item for a personal site. A few last thoughts:
**Wordpress automatically redirects to the non http version. **
No, it does not. On the SEOmoz site, you are seeing the proper redirect. For example, if you take this Q&A post and prefix it with https:// you will wind up on this exact Q&A post in the http:// protocol. If you look at the Mozbar, you will see the redirect.
On your site, you are taken to another page from your hosting company.
**I dont know many personal sites that pay for a https cert **
There is no need for you to purchase a SSL certificate. That is not what I was suggesting.
I apologize for bringing this trivial matter up. Please disregard.
-
Ryan,
Thanks for your feedback. Wordpress automatically redirects to the non http version.
Regarding https sites I dont know many personal sites that pay for a https cert (or even why there would be a need.) Also I don't link to anything with https. It doesn't seem really seem necessary (unless I"m missing something.)
Heck, I just tried to go to https://seomoz.com and their site doesn't even go there.
-
Perhaps I am being too picky, especially for a non-business site.
I would share that even though your site is noahsdad.com, you took the effort to redirect www.noahsdad.com to noahsdad.com, right? Why did you take that extra step?
Whatever the response, the same concept would apply to the redirect from https protocol to http. The issue may never come up, but then again it only requires minimal effort to close this gap.
-
Yah, but my site is http://noahsdad.com/ - should I expect https to also work?
-
Try going to the following address: https://noahsdad.com
-
Yelp, the crawl just happened today.
Also you'll have to excuse my ignorance but I'm not sure what you mean by the last half of your comment. "my site does not handle https protocol well?"
Can you explain that to me. (I'm still learning.)
Thanks for taking the time to help by the way.
-
Are you certain you crawled the site after the redirect was in place?
If so, can you share the full record?
By the way, while looking at this is issue I noticed your site does not handle https protocol well. Try using it on your home page and see what happens. If your site does not use https, I would suggest redirecting all https requests to their http equivalent.
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
-
Can you help by advising how to stop a URL from referring to another URL on my website with a 404 errorplease?
How to stop a URL from referring to another URL on my site. I'm getting a 404 error on a referred URL which is (https://webwritinglab.com/know-exactly-what-your-ideal-clients-want-in-8-easy-steps/[null id=43484])referred from URL (https://webwritinglab.com/know-exactly-what-your-ideal-clients-want-in-8-easy-steps/) The referred URL is the URL page that I want and I do not need it redirecting to the other URL as that's presenting a 404 error. I have tried saving the permalink in WordPress and recreated the .htaccess file and the problem is still there. Can you advise how to fix this please? Is it a case of removing the redirect? Is this advisable and how do I do that please? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Nichole.wynter20200 -
Soft 404 in Search Console
Search console is showing quite a lot of soft 404 pages on my site, but when I click on the links, the pages are all there. Is there a reason for this? It's a pretty big site - I'm getting 141 soft 404s from about 20,000 pages
Technical SEO | | abisti20 -
How to find and fix 404 and broken links?
Hi, My campaign is showing me many 404 problems and other tools are also showing me broken links, but the links they show me dose work and I cant seem to find the broken links or the cause of the 404. Can you help?
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Linking Domains in Open Site Explorer Report No Longer Exist. Help.
Hello to all, I have a number of Linking Domains on our Open Site Explorer Report that no longer exist. I've run URL checks on just a sample of the list, and found that approx. 35% of that sample are from now dead Linking Domains. Can someone help? If these Linking Domains are defunct, how can I remove these? Does Google reflect negatively on these dead Linking Domains in our SERPs? Has anyone experienced this before? What action did you take?
Technical SEO | | -Al-0 -
Application/x-msdownload in crawl report?
In a crawl report for my company's site, the "content_type_header" column usually contains "text/html". But there are some random pages with "application/x-msdownload"... what does "application/x-msdownload" mean? <colgroup><col width="121"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | JimLynch
| |0 -
Google's "cache:" operator is returning a 404 error.
I'm doing the "cache:" operator on one of my sites and Google is returning a 404 error. I've swapped out the domain with another and it works fine. Has anyone seen this before? I'm wondering if G is crawling the site now? Thx!
Technical SEO | | AZWebWorks0 -
Move established site from .co.uk to .org - good or bad idea?
I am currently considering moving our site from the current .co.uk domain to the .org version which we also own. The site is established and indexed for 7 years, ranks well and has circa 10k traffic per month which is mainly UK & US traffic. The reason for the change to the .org domain is to make the site more global facing and give us the opportunity to develop the site into multi language within directories (.org/es/ etc.) and then target those to the local search engines. For the kind of site it is (community based) it wouldn’t really work to split this into lots of separate country targeted domains. So the choice is to either stick with the .co.uk and add the other foreign language specific content in directories within the .co.uk or move to the .org and do the same (there is also a potential third option of purchasing the .com which is currently unused but that could be pricey!) We are also planning a big overhaul of the site with redesign, lots of added content and reorganisation of the site – but are thinking that it would be better to move the domain on a 1:1 basis first with the current design, content and URL structure in place and then do the other changes 2 or 3 months down the line. I have read up on SEOmoz, google guidelines etc on moving a site to a new domain and understand the theoretical approach of moving the site and the steps to take (1to1 301 redirects, sitemaps on old and new etc) and I will retain ownership of the .co.uk so the redirects can remain in place indefinitely. However having worked so hard to get the site to where it is in the search engines and traffic levels I am very worried about whether the domain change is a good move. I am more than happy to accept a temporary fluctuation in rankings & traffic for 1 – 4 weeks as reported may happen as long as I can be sure it will return after a temporary period and be as strong (or almost as strong) as the previous rankings / traffic. Looking for peoples experiences to give me the confidence / reassurance to go ahead with this or any info on why I shouldn’t Thanks in advance for your advice. Adrian.
Technical SEO | | Zilla0 -
Thoughts about stub pages - 200 & noindex ok, or 404?
With large database/template driven websites it is often possible to get a lot of pages with no content on them. What are the current thoughts regarding these pages with no content, options; Return a 200 header code with noindex meta tag Return a 404 page & header code Something else? Thanks
Technical SEO | | slingshot0