Help with Webmaster Tools "Not Followed" Errors

[mybinding1]

I have been doing a bunch of 301 redirects on my site to address 404 pages and in each case I check the redirect to make sure it works.  I have also been using tools like Xenu to make sure that I'm not linking to 404 or 301 content from my site.  However on Friday I started getting "Not Followed" errors in GWT.  When I check the URL that they tell me provided the error it seems to redirect correctly.  One example is this...

http://www.mybinding.com/.sc/ms/dd/ee/48738/Astrobrights-Pulsar-Pink-10-x-13-65lb-Cover-50pk

I tried a redirect tracer and it reports the redirect correctly.  Fetch as googlebot returns the correct page.  Fetch as bing bot in the new bing webmaster tools shows that it redirects to the correct page but there is a small note that says "Status: Redirection limit reached".  I see this on all of the redirects that I check in the bing webmaster portal.

Do I have something misconfigured.  Can anyone give me a hint on how to troubleshoot this type of issue.

Thanks,

Jeff

[irvingw]

Hey Jeff,

Were you able to fix this and get the "Status: Redirection limit reached." Bing message to go away?

Any idea what that message means, is Bing seeing daisy chained 301s on that URL or is it just too many sitewide 301's being hit by the crawler and Bing thinks you are wasting their time?

[AlanMosley]

then you are on the right track, i asked because many seem to think that they must redirect 404s simply because they are found in WMT.

[mybinding1]

It was a tough decision on what to do with the 404's on the site.  I just made a major configuration change to the server that converted a bunch of soft 404's over to hard ones.  This caused WMT to find thousands of 404 pages on the site in a matter of days.  My site doesn't link to any of these pages but most of them have external links pointing to them.

In the end I decided to redirect discontinued products to the most appropriate category page on the site and to redirect mistyped URL's etc. to the appropriate page as well.

[AlanMosley]

Yes the 301 works ok, but may I ask why you are 301'ing the 404s, do they have external links? if not just let them fade away. 404's simple mean the page has gone, and search engines will hounor that ater a while