HTML Encoding Error
-
Okay, so this is driving me nuts because I should know how to find and fix this but for the life of me cannot. One of the sites I work for has a long-standing crawl error in Google WMT tools for the URL /a%3E that appears on nearly every page of the site. I know that a%3E is an improperly encoded > but I can't seem to find where exactly in the code its coming from. So I keep putting it off and coming back to it every week or two only to wrack my brain and give up on it after about an hour (since its not a priority and its not really hurting anything). The site in question is https://www.deckanddockboxes.com/ and some of the pages it can be found on are /small-trash-can.html, /Dock-Step-Storage-Bin.html, and /Standard-Dock-Box-Maxi.html (among others). I figured it was about time to ask for another set of eyes to look at this for me. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
-
Could be, I suppose. But it's been happening on and off for months now. I just mostly stop caring after a bit, clear out the errors and get annoyed when I see it pop up again. Its one of those things that doesn't actually cause a problem but I can't help feeling irked by its existence. All in all, I'm perfectly fine with the solution being "Google is wrong, leave it alone"... that's basically what I've been doing anyway.
-
I did a Screaming Frog crawl of your site, but didn't see any malformed links. Maybe it was a temporary issue that just hasn't been cleared from Google's cache.
-
Sorry, I wasn't getting email notifications that people had answered. I checked with our remaining coder who said that was there on purpose (much like Highland stated) and he's going to take a look deeper into it once he has the chance but doesn't know why its showing up like that.
-
in XHTML(which he's using) and HTML5, it is proper formatting to add a closing slash to tags that don't have a closing tag. So br, hr, input, etc. all need that closing slash.
-
This is a bit of a long shot, Mike, but it's such a weird error that long shots might pay off
On your code around line 769 you have a horizontal rule inserted, which has an extra, unneeded "/" before the final ">" of the tag. I can only assume that Googlebot is thinking that's an attempt at a relative URL?
Cart is empty
*** * *** **//This may be the problem?
You wouldn't have noticed it as the horizontal rule is still appearing as expected.
Like I said, long shot, but since the cart appears on nearly every page, that could explain it.
Dying to know if that's it, so lemme know either way?
Paul
-
The page is being linked from only internal pages on the site not from any outside websites or scraper. Some of the pages WMT says the incorrect page is being crawled from are listed above.
-
Where are you seeing the error in Webmaster Tools?
If it's in the Crawl Errors section, you can click on one of the links and click the "Linked From" tab, which will show you what pages are linking to the malformed link. A lot of times these will just be external scraper sites that are just linking to your site improperly.
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
-
Homepage not ranking main keywords - structure error?
Dear, Moz community We have an issue. We have a classified advertisement website. Our website is built like this**homepage (**Optimized for main keyword, has latest listings from all categories ) - category 1 (we did not want to add alteration of the keyword we want to rank homepage, as we thought this would "compete" with homepage) - category 2 - category 3 - **category **4 The listing URLs look like this www.example.com/categoryname/listingname Now the issue is that the homepage is not ranking at all for the main keywords. When we used URL structure like this "example.com/main-keyword-listing-id" homepage was ranking (other sites). Now with new site we used the best practice and added url's as described above (/categoryname/listingid).This caused our homepage not to rank at all for the main keywords.What did we do wrong? We want our homepage to rank for the main keyword and categories for theirs. Should we 1. Change the category 1 name to main keyword (maybe some long tail) so we have the main keyword in URLs? So at least one of the main categories has the main keyword in the listing URLs2. Should we change the category listing urls all back to /main-keyword-listing-id? We thought that this was a bit spammy, so that´s why we used categories. _This means that all listings have same URL name and not best for ranking cateogries_3. Just link back to homepage internally with the main keyword and google should catch that? _Currently in menu you go to homepage clicking HOME but we can add for example our main keyword there - Latest car advertisements _I would be happy of any feedback.
Technical SEO | | advertisingtech0 -
Using "Div's" to place content at top of HTML
Is it still a good practice to use "div's" to place content at the top of the HTML code, if your content is at the bottom of the web page?
Technical SEO | | tdawson090 -
Product Code Error in Volusion
I started working with about 800+ 404 errors in September after we migrated our site to Volusion 13. There is a recurring 404 error that I can't trace inside of our source code or in our Sitemap. I don't know what is causing this error so I have no way of knowing how to fix it. Tech support at Volusion has been less than helpful so any feed back would be appreciated. | http://www.apelectric.com/Generac-6438-Guardian-Series-11kW-p/{1} | The error is seemingly starting with the product code. The addendum at the end of the URL "p/" should be followed by the product code. In this example, 6438. Instead, the code is being automatically populated with %7B1%7D Has anyone else this issue with Volusion or does this look familiar across any other platform?
Technical SEO | | MonicaOConnor0 -
404 error - but I can't find any broken links on the referrer pages
Hi, My crawl has diagnosed a client's site with eight 404 errors. In my CSV download of the crawl, I have checked the source code of the 'referrer' pages, but can't find where the link to the 404 error page is. Could there be another reason for getting 404 errors? Thanks for your help. Katharine.
Technical SEO | | PooleyK0 -
How do you mark a quote HTML wise?
Hi, As far as I know, in the past Italic was used to emphasize (similar use to Bold). Now I've seen people use Italic for quotations. Is that the correct thing to do for an entire paragraph or is it a problem for Google wise? Thanks
Technical SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Cyrillic letter in URL - Encoding
Hi all We are launching our site in Russia. As far as I can see by searching Google all sites have URLs in latin letters. Is there a special reason for this? - It seems that cyrillic letters also work. My technical staff says that it might give some encoding problems. Can anyone give me some insight into this? Thanks in advance.. / Kenneth
Technical SEO | | Kennethskonto0 -
Crawl Errors In Webmaster Tools
Hi Guys, Searched the web in an answer to the importance of crawl errors in Webmaster tools but keep coming up with different answers. I have been working on a clients site for the last two months and (just completed one months of link bulding), however seems I have inherited issues I wasn't aware of from the previous guy that did the site. The site is currently at page 6 for the keyphrase 'boiler spares' with a keyword rich domain and a good onpage plan. Over the last couple of weeks he has been as high as page 4, only to be pushed back to page 8 and now settled at page 6. The only issue I can seem to find with the site in webmaster tools is crawl errors here are the stats:- In sitemaps : 123 Not Found : 2,079 Restricted by robots.txt 1 Unreachable: 2 I have read that ecommerce sites can often give off false negatives in terms of crawl errors from Google, however, these not found crawl errors are being linked from pages within the site. How have others solved the issue of crawl errors on ecommerce sites? could this be the reason for the bouncing round in the rankings or is it just a competitive niche and I need to be patient? Kind Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | optimiz10 -
404 Error on Spider Emulators
I recently began working at a company called Uncommon Goods. I ran a few different spider emulators on our homepage (uncommongoods.com) and I saw a 404 Error on SEO-browser.com as well as URL errors on Summit Media's emulator and SEOMoz's crawler. It seems there is a serious problem here. How is this affecting our site from an SEO standpoint? What are the repercussions? Also, I know we have a lot of javascript on our homepage..is this causing the 404? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks! -Zack
Technical SEO | | znotes0