Moz & Xenu Link Sleuth unable to crawl a website (403 error)
-
It could be that I am missing something really obvious however we are getting the following error when we try to use the Moz tool on a client website. (I have read through a few posts on 403 errors but none that appear to be the same problem as this)
Moz Result
Title 403 : Error
Meta Description 403 Forbidden
Meta Robots_Not present/empty_
Meta Refresh_Not present/empty_
Xenu Link Sleuth Result
Broken links, ordered by link:
error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s): Thanks in advance!
-
Hey Liam,
Thanks for following up. Unfortunately, we use thousands of dynamic IPs through Amazon Web Services to run our crawler and the IP would change from crawl to crawl. We don't even have a set range for the IPs we use through AWS.
As for throttling, we don't have a set throttle. We try to space out the server hits enough to not bring down the server, but then hit the server as often as necessary in order to crawl the full site or crawl limit in a reasonable amount of time. We try to find a balance between hitting the site too hard and having extremely long crawl times. If the devs are worried about how often we hit the server, they can add a crawl delay of 10 to the robots.txt to throttle the crawler. We will respect that delay.
If the devs use Moz, as well, they would also be getting a 403 on their crawl because the server is blocking our user agent specifically. The server would give the same status code regardless of who has set up the campaign.
I'm sorry this information isn't more specific. Please let me know if you need any other assistance.
Chiaryn
-
Hi Chiaryn
The sage continues....this is the response my client got back from the developers - please could you let me have the answers to the two questions?
Apparently as part of their ‘SAF’ (?) protocols, if the IT director sees a big spike in 3<sup>rd</sup> party products trawling the site he will block them! They did say that they use moz too. What they’ve asked me to get from moz is:
- Moz IP address/range
- Level of throttling they will use
I would question that if THEY USE MOZ themselves why would they need these answers but if I go back with that I will be going around in circles - any chance of letting me know the answer(s)?
Thanks in advance.
Liam
-
Awesome - thank you.
Kind Regards
Liam
-
Hey There,
The robots.txt shouldn't really affect 403s; you would actually get a "blocked by robots.txt" error if that was the cause. Your server is basically telling us that we are not authorized to access your site. I agree with Mat that we are most likely being blocked in the htaccess file. It may be that your server is flagging our crawler and Xenu's crawler as troll crawlers or something along those lines. I ran a test on your URL using a non-existent crawler, Rogerbot with a capital R, and got a 200 status code back but when I run the test with our real crawler, rogerbot with a lowercase r, I get the 403 error (http://screencast.com/t/Sv9cozvY2f01). This tells me that the server is specifically blocking our crawler, but not all crawlers in general.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Chiaryn
Help Team Ninja -
Hi Mat
Thanks for the reply - robots.txt file is as follows:
## The following are infinitely deep trees User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /cms/events Disallow: /cms/latest Disallow: /cms/cookieprivacy Disallow: /cms/help Disallow: /site/services/megamenu/ Disallow: /site/mobile/ I can't get access to the .htaccess file at present (we're not the developers) Anyone else any thoughts? Weirdly I can get Screaming Frog info back on the site :-/
-
403s are tricky to diagnose because they, by their very nature, don't tell you much. They're sort of the server equivalent of just shouting "NO!".
You say Moz & Xenu are receiving the 403. I assume that it loads properly from a browser.
I'd start looking at the .htaccess . Any odd deny statements in there? It could be that an IP range or user agent is blocked. Some people like to block common crawlers (Not calling Roger names there). Check the robots.txt whilst you are there, although that shouldn't return a 403 really.
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
-
Why my site not crawl?
hi all me allow rogerbot in robots.txt but rogerbot can't crawl my site my site: toska-co.ir
Moz Pro | | jahanidawodi0 -
What is Linking C-Blocks
Currently i am using MOZ pro tool under moz analyticls >> Moz Competitive Link Metrics >> history having a graph "Linking C-Blocks" Please help me understanding Linking C-Blocks, what is, How to build, how to define ...
Moz Pro | | shankar3334 -
Can someone kindly explain what 'Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags' means? Is this a critical error and how can it be rectified?
Can someone kindly explain what 'Crawl Issue Found: No rel="canonical" Tags' means? Is this a critical error and how can it be rectified?
Moz Pro | | JoshMcLean0 -
Why is Link Count smaller than Internal Links in Crawl Test report?
We recently ran the crawl test report and for most of our pages we are getting 1150 internal links but 40-50 as the link count. Why is there such a big disparity?
Moz Pro | | usdmseo0 -
403 error for a member site
Perhaps a stupid question but SEOmoz registers 403 errors for pages behind a membersite (ie. they are restricted on purpose). Should I noindex these pages or just let SEOmoz register these "errors"?
Moz Pro | | Crunchii0 -
Discrepancy between the Moz Trust Number and Chart, same thing for Moz rank.
I am showing a difference between my Moz rank and Moz Trust Number and their respective charts. Is anyone else seeing this issue?
Moz Pro | | EcommerceSite0 -
Unable to setup Campaign
I am trying to create new Campaign but keep getting this error. What am i doing wrong? _We have detected that the root domain djuice.com.pk does not respond to web requests. Using this domain, we will be unable to crawl your site or present accurate SERP information _
Moz Pro | | HasanPK0 -
Crawl Issues
My website - qtmoving.com - has 26 articles and when the SEOmoz did a crawl it only found 13 articles. Can someone please give me some insight as to why not all pages are being crawled.
Moz Pro | | CohesiveMarketing0