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.
Weird 404 URL Problem - domain name being placed at end of urls
-
Hey there.
For some reason when doing crawl tests I'm finding pages with the domain name being tacked on the end and causing 404 errors.
For example: http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname.comThis is happening to all pages, posts and even category type
1. Site is in Wordpress
2. Using Yoast SEO pluginAny suggestions?
Thanks!
-
Hey Jay,
Can you tell me, how you found the incorrect html? I am having the exact same problem, as you did back then, but I don't know where to look. I am having two sites, both Wordpress and build over the same theme, but one has a lot of 404 errors according to Moz and Webmastertools. The other one doesn't.
It's it driving me crazy!
Thanks!
-
grats!
-
I found the main culprit! There was a sitewide link in the footer that had incorrect html formatting. Instead of http://domainname.com, it was incorrectly inserted as domainname.com.
Thanks for the help!
-
I had this problem in Wordpress about a year ago. In my case it was caused by links being entered into posts getting turned into relative links instead of being absolute links. Somehow this was causing the links to append the domain name to the end of the url. In our case it turned out to be an incompatibility between plugins. Have you tested all your plugins to see if any of them are interfering and causing this issue?
-
It's often an internal link that's a bit screwed up that will cause this to happen. Look for a missing colon in http:, or something like that.
-
I've run the crawl tests in Screaming Frog and Moz. Webmaster tools is finding these errors as well. The sitemap is clean and void of these URLS which is strange.
Just to clarify- All the old urls are fine such as http://domainname.com/page-name . They've all been duplicated with http://domainname.com/page-name/http://domainname
-
Hey Jay —
Where're you doing these crawl tests? Does Google Webmaster and Moz both show these errors?
Also, is there a remote chance something is wrong in the sitemap.xml?
— Andrew
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 does my old brand name still show up on organic search but as my new brand name and domain?
Hello mozers! I have quite the conundrum. My client used to have the unfortunate brand name "Meetoo" - which by the way they had before the movement happened! So naturally, they rebranded to the name Vevox in March 2019 to avoid confusion to users. However, when you search for their old brand name "Meetoo" the first organic link that pops up is their domain www.vevox.com. Now, this wouldn't normally be a problem, however it is when any #MeToo news appears in the media and we get a sudden influx or wrong traffic. I've searched the HTML and content for the term "Meetoo" but can only find one trace of this name through a widget. Not enough to hold an organic spot. My only other thinking is that www.vevox.com is redirected from www.meetoo.com. So I'm assuming this is why Vevox appear under the search term "Meetoo". How can I remove the homepage www.vevox.com from appearing for the search term "meetoo"? Can anyone help? AvGGYBc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz3 -
Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google
I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Redirect domain or keep separate domains in each country?
Hi all Hoping this might be something that can be answered given the number of variables 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IsaCleanse
My main site is www.isacleanse.com.au (Obviously targeted to Australian Market) and also www.isacleanse.co.nz targeted to NZ. The main Keywords im targeting are 'Isagenix' for both and also Isagenix Australia, Isagenix Perth, Sydney (Australian cities) and Isagenix NZ, Isagenix New Zealand, Isagenix Auckland etc.. for NZ The Australian site gets a lot more traffic and Australian market gets a lot more searches - I also have a section www.isacleanse.com.au/isagenix-new-zealand/ on the Australian site. The question is am I best off redirrecting the .co.nz domain completley to the Australian Domain to give it extra SEO Juice?0 -
What are Soft 404's and are they a problem
Hi, I have some old pages that were coming up in google WMT as a 404. These had links into them so i thought i'd do a 301 back to either the home page or to a relevant category or page. However these are now listed in WMT as soft 404's. I'm not sure what this means and whether google is saying it doesn't like this? Any advice welcomed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
Cons and pros of changing your e-commerce store domain name?
We have an online toy store, the domain is old over 10 years and we have some traffic, we are considering to change our domain name. There are two reasons why. First of all, we expand our product category, before we were only a puzzle store now we sell almost any kind of toy. And at this point, our current domain, PuzzleZoo.com is not representing our capacity. We also have toyzoo.com domain registered, that is also an old domain but there has been no activity with that domain. Our concern is, how do we avoid to lose ranking and keyword authority, are we going to start from the ground? What are the correct procedures to follow during this switch if we prefer to switch? As an alternative scenario, if we decide to keep both and open another e-store with toyzoo domain name and continue operating PuzzleZoo.com, with same products, will taht be a duplicate issue? If it is what are the consequences? (Just to add a note here, our PuzzleZoo is also a small brick and mortar store chain in CA and TX) ToyZoo will only be an online store. Even in this case at the eyes of Google, are we going to have a duplicate store that can potentially be penalized or PuzzleZoo being a brick and mortar store chain might help us to avoid being penalized? Should we switch the domain and redirect PuzzleZoo to ToyZoo, should we keep them both and running separately? We need to give a decision and I was wondering if there are any expert here that can give us a good intelligent advise on which path to go?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PuzzleZoo0 -
Domain Name Change - Best Practices?
Good day guys, We got a restaurant that is changing its name and domain. However they are keeping the same server location, same content and same pages (we are just changing the logo on the website). It just has to go a new domain. We don't want to lose the value of the current site, and we want to avoid any duplicate penalties. Could you please advise of the best practices of doing a domain name change? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael-Goode0 -
Is it worth switching from .net to .com if you own both domain names
For over 20 years the company I work for has used www.company.net as their TLD, because we could not register www.company.com at that time. However, currently we also own www.company.com www.company.com has a 301 re-direct to www.company.net We are a global company, and market leader in our industry. Our company name is associated with the product we make, and our competitors use our company name as their targeted keywords to attract visitors to their sites because our company name is synonym with the product we and they make. As we are a global company we also have lots of TLDcc's. The email address of all our employees worldwide have a .net email address extension. Would you advice switching from www.company.net to www.company.com??? And if so, what would be the reasons for this switch. Would it only be for branding purposes? Looking forward to some insights before taking on such an invasive switch (because of the switch of all email addresses of employees worldwide). Best regards, Astrid Groeneveld
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cordstrap0 -
Multiple Domain names pointing at one website
Hello, A collegue has asked if we can buy multiple domain names which contain keywords and point them at our website. Is this good practise or will it be seen as spam? Will these domains actually get ranked? I'm sure I'm not the first person to raise this but can't seem to find any questions and answers about this. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | markc-1971830