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.
How to find links to 404 pages?
-
I know that I used to be able to do this, but I can't seem to remember.
One of the sites I am working on has had a lot of pages moving around lately. I am sure some links got lost in the fray that I would like to recover, what is the easiest way to see links going to a domain that are pointing to 404 pages?
-
where is that little button next to my crawl warnings that lets me open urls, or explore links to that url using OSE?
-
Specifically in Open Site Explorer, check out the "Top Pages" tab to see if any of your top linked to pages are returning a 404. This tab is actually the first one I look at when running analysis of a site.
-
Sorry for the delay in my answer.
When you have detected all the 404 of your website, you can use the "Explore URL" search in Siteexplorer. If are still existing backlinks to those pages, Yahoo Siteexplorer will show them.
To be sure I just did a try with an 404 of a new client of mine, and just discovered that one 404 page was linked by a Yale University page... obviously I've just made an 301
-
As familiar as I am with Yahoo SiteExplorer I have never used it to find external links that go to pages that are no longer there. How can I do this with that tool?
-
Hello Spencer,
I recommend two tools
1. Xenu link sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html#Download)
2. Gsitecrawler ( http://gsitecrawler.com/en/download/)
Both will report all the linked pages throwing a 404 error and other status codes including "forbidden request", "no connection", "no such host" and more.
Hope this helps.
Sameer
-
Did you look into the Google Webmaster Tools already? There you can see them as well - of course not all. But you have to check from time to time - they don't show up all together. If you fix some perpaps some more will come up ...
-
Hi Spencer:
I don't know if this qualifies as the easiest way , but it ranks right up there:
-
You can use Open Site Explorer, but i suggest you to widen the discovery using also Yahoo! SiteExplorer
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
-
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or postively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please?
Does anyone know the linking of hashtags on Wix sites does it negatively or positively impact SEO. It is coming up as an error in site crawls 'Pages with 404 errors' Anyone got any experience please? For example at the bottom of this blog post https://www.poppyandperle.com/post/face-painting-a-global-language the hashtags are linked, but they don't go to a page, they go to search results of all other blogs using that hashtag. Seems a bit of a strange approach to me.
Technical SEO | | Mediaholix0 -
How to find orphan pages
Hi all, I've been checking these forums for an answer on how to find orphaned pages on my site and I can see a lot of people are saying that I should cross check the my XML sitemap against a Screaming Frog crawl of my site. However, the sitemap is created using Screaming Frog in the first place... (I'm sure this is the case for a lot of people too). Are there any other ways to get a full list of orphaned pages? I assume it would be a developer request but where can I ask them to look / extract? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | KJH-HAC1 -
How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Find all external 404 errors/links?
Hi All, We have recently discovered a site was linking to our site but it was linking to an incorrect url, resulting in a 404 error. We had only found this by pure chance and wondered if there was a tool out there that will tell us when a site is linking to an incorrect url on our site? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Handling 301s: Multiple pages to a single page (consolidation)
Been scouring the interwebs and haven't found much information on redirecting two serparate pages to a single new page. Here is what it boils down to: Let's say a website has two pages, both with good page authority of products that are becoming fazed out. The products, Widget A and Widget B, are still popular search terms, but they are being combined into ONE product, Widget C. While Widget A and Widget B STILL have plenty to do with Widget C, Widget C is now the new page, the main focus page, and the page you want everyone to see and Google to recognize. Now, do I 301 Widget A and Widget B pages to Widget C, ALTHOUGH Widgets A and B previously had nothing to do with one another? (Remember, we want to try and keep some of that authority the two page have had.) OR do we keep Widget A and Widget B pages "alive", take them off the main navigation, and then put a "disclaimer" on the pages announcing they are now part of Widget C and link to Widget C? OR Should Widgets A and B page be canonicalized to Widget C? Again, keep in mind, widgets A and B previously were not similar, but NOW they are and result in Widget C. (If you are confused, we can provide a REAL work example of what we are talkinga about, but decided to not be specific to our industry for this.) Appreciate any and all thoughts on this.
Technical SEO | | JU19850 -
How to remove the 4XX Client error,Too many links in a single page Warning and Cannonical Notices.
Firstly,I am getting around 12 Errors in the category 4xx Client error. The description says that this is either bad or a broken link.How can I repair this ? Secondly, I am getting lots of warnings related to too many page links of a single page.I want to know how to tackle this ? Finally, I don't understand the basics of Cannonical notices.I have around 12 notices of this kind which I want to remove too. Please help me out in this regard. Thank you beforehand. Amit Ganguly http://aamthoughts.blogspot.com - Sustainable Sphere
Technical SEO | | amit.ganguly0