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.
Subdomain 403 error
-
Hi Everyone,
A crawler from our SEO tool detects a 403 error from a link from our main domain to a a couple of subdomains. However, these subdomains are perfect accessibly. What could be the problem? Is this error caused by the server, the crawlbot or something else?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
Jens -
no at all
-
Hi Roman,
Thanks for your answer!
It's a commercial tool.
I checked the robots.txt file and .htaccess, but didn't saw any problems.
As you say, the problem can just be caused by the user-agent.If so, this will not affect my SEO efforts, right?
-
Which tool are you using is this a custom tool or commercial tool such as Screamingfrog?
-
These are all for client errors. That means the page wasn’t found and something is wrong with the request. Whatever is happening though, the issue is typically on the client side:
403: Forbidden, So In your case, the first place that you need to check is your .htaccess and your Robots.txt file and make sure that they are not blocking any crawler or at least the crawler of your tools.
For example, some Hosting providers block all the crawlers that are not Google or Bing to save resources. So is usual that Roger (Moz Crawler) has problems to crawl a page that is blocked on the server side. Usually, Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush has this kind of problem so in summary
- Make sure your .htaccess and your Robots.txt is not blocking your crawler
- Make sure your hosting is not blocking your crawler
- If all the above does not work try to modify the user-agent of your tool
Hope this info helps you with your problem
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
-
GMB Bulk Upload Error
Hello! I am continuing to have issues with the bulk upload option.Currently, there are 12 non-verified locations in a location group in my GMB account. I have approximately 6-8 more that need to be added to this group via bulk upload. When uploading the spreadsheet, I receive an error reading "You've exceeded the limit for the about of locations you can upload to Google My Business in a single day. Try again later." It seems to happen specifically to the locations that aren't in my GMB account already. The others, the ones already in the account, are fine and simply read "No updates" when the bulk upload sheet is read. Everything else is marked as an error. Why is it marking some listings as nonviable when they come in via the bulk verification spreadsheet, which has been downloaded directly from the links Google has provided, and filled in with the help of the sample and amenities list?How do we finish uploading all of the remaining locations?I have another group, separate group (same company, groups split into US and International) under my name that may also need a bulk upload - what can I do to avoid this error in the future? Can they still be bulk uploaded to my account after I upload the first location group's listings?If you could provide any guidance, I'd be very grateful.Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | kmarsh0 -
Search Console Errors 400 and 405
Hi, Does anyone know if search console errors showing as follows are damaging to serps: /xmlrpc.php is returning 405 error /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php is returning 400 error These errors seem to of coincided almost to the day that there was a ranking drop for the primary keyword from mid page 1 to bottom of page 2. No matter what I do I cannot seem to correct these errors. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | DaleZon0 -
Is there any benefit in using a subdomain redirected to a single page?
For example if we have a domain www.bobshardware.com.au and we setup a subdomain sydneysupplies.bobshardware.com.au and then brisbanescrewdrivers.bobshardware.com.au and used those in ad campaigns. Each subdomain being redirected back to a single page such as bobshardware.com.au/brisbane-screw-drivers etc. Is there a benefit ? Cheers
Technical SEO | | techdesign0 -
Some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error.
Hello I'm a seo newbie and some help from the community here would be greatly appreciated. I have submitted the sitemap of my website in google webmasters tools and now I got this warning: "When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot due to an HTTP status error. All accessible URLs will still be submitted." How do I fix this? What should I do? Many thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | GoldenRanking140 -
403 forbidden error how to solve them
hi, i have been using a great tool today called screaming frog which was shown to me by Thomas Zickell when i used the tool i found some worrying things for my site www.in2town.co.uk. what i have found is, i have a large number of 403 forbidden status on my home page and i do not know why here is an example http://www.in2town.co.uk/emmerdale/emmerdale-debbie-hits-rock-bottom it loads fine but on the tool it shows it as an error and shows it as having no meta tags or anything but there is meta tags in there can anyone please let me know how to solve this and why it has happened many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Subdomain and Domain Rankings
I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league) when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks
Technical SEO | | bThere0 -
Subdomain Removal in Robots.txt with Conditional Logic??
I would like to see if there is a way to add conditional logic to the robots.txt file so that when we push from DEV to PRODUCTION and the robots.txt file is pushed, we don't have to remember to NOT push the robots.txt file OR edit it when it goes live. My specific situation is this: I have www.website.com, dev.website.com and new.website.com and somehow google has indexed the DEV.website.com and NEW.website.com and I'd like these to be removed from google's index as they are causing duplicate content. Should I: a) add 2 new GWT entries for DEV.website.com and NEW.website.com and VERIFY ownership - if I do this, then when the files are pushed to LIVE won't the files contain the VERIFY META CODE for the DEV version even though it's now LIVE? (hope that makes sense) b) write a robots.txt file that specifies "DISALLOW: DEV.website.com/" is that possible? I have only seen examples of DISALLOW with a "/" in the beginning... Hope this makes sense, can really use the help! I'm on a Windows Server 2008 box running ColdFusion websites.
Technical SEO | | ErnieB0 -
Microsite on subdomain vs. subdirectory
Based on this post from 2009, it's recommended in most situations to set up a microsite as a subdirectory as opposed to a subdomain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites. The primary argument seems to be that the search engines view the subdomain as a separate entity from the domain and therefore, the subdomain doesn't benefit from any of the trust rank, quality scores, etc. Rand made a comment that seemed like the subdomain could SOMETIMES inherit some of these factors, but didn't expound on those instances. What determines whether the search engine will view your subdomain hosted microsite as part of the main domain vs. a completely separate site? I read it has to do with the interlinking between the two.
Technical SEO | | ryanwats0