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 a specific link on my website (currently causing redirects)
-
Hi everyone,
I've used crawlers like Xenu to find broken links before, and I love these tools. What I can't figure out is how to find specific pieces of code within my site. For example, Webmaster Tools tells me there are still links to old pages somewhere on my website but I just can't find them. Do you know of a crawler that can search for a specific link within the html?
Thanks in advance,
Josh
-
Use the SEOmoz crawl report.
Let Roger loose on your site, then when the report is available, filter the excel file on the broken link field. Then check the "referrer" field for each broken link. The referrer field will show the page where the broken link was discovered.
You can then use the SEOmoz bar to highlight the links on a page. Sometimes a link isn't obvious as it is hidden. In those cases you can always right-click on the page and choose View Page Source from the options, then search for the link.
-
Thanks for the reply.
I should have specified that the links are being reported in Bing webmaster tools and not Google webmaster tools. Bing doesn't seem to tell you where the bad links are.
-
Dreamweaver has a way of searching an entire website if you download the site to Dreamweaver. But webmaster tools should tell you where the links are being found on your site. They typically tell you which URL has the bad links.
-
There are a few ways I would approach this. In order:
-
Run a find in files using one of the text editors I use for coding, either UltraEdit or PhpEd, you can use whatever you are comfortable with,
-
Check the server logs for that page, it should show a referring page, which may not be on your site,
-
or just do a 301 from it to your home page or a relevant page. I have had situations where people link to the wrong page and I redirect them instead of letting it 404,
-
If you are sure it is an actual link on your site, and maybe it is being generated (you didn't post a link so I don't know which site you are referring to) , and not a redirect from somewhere, consider paying someone $5 on http://fiverr.com/ to find it.
-
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
-
Adding https version of website: how best to redirect
If I have 4 versions of my site http://www
Technical SEO | | bhsiao
http://
https://www
https:// What is the best way to redirect without losing seo positions? i have been mainly using http://www but have recently added my ssl so https works also. I heard at Moz Con that I should get the https working. All of my marketing and ads are going to http://www 301 redirect 3 of them? Which 3? If https is becoming important, should that be my main url? will it hurt my seo to switch? Thank you so much in advance!0 -
Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?
My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Technical SEO | | usDragons0 -
Can you use Screaming Frog to find all instances of relative or absolute linking?
My client wants to pull every instance of an absolute URL on their site so that they can update them for an upcoming migration to HTTPS (the majority of the site uses relative linking). Is there a way to use the extraction tool in Screaming Frog to crawl one page at a time and extract every occurrence of _href="http://" _? I have gone back and forth between using an x-path extractor as well as a regex and have had no luck with either. Ex. X-path: //*[starts-with(@href, “http://”)][1] Ex. Regex: href=\”//
Technical SEO | | Merkle-Impaqt0 -
How to find temporary redirects of existing site you don't control?
I am getting ready to move a clients site from another company. They have like 35 tempory redirects according to MOZ. Question is, how can I find out then current redirects so I can update everything for the new site? Do I need access to the current htaccess file to do this?
Technical SEO | | scott3150 -
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 -
What is link Schemes?
Hello Friends, Today I am reading about link schemes on http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 there are a several ways how to avoid Google penalties and also talk about the low quality links. But I can't understand about "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links" Is there he talked about low page rank, Alexa or something else?
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
How to Redirect all inactive Feed to a specific Wordpress page
Hi Guys, I've been doing much cleaning on my blog lately and deleted numerous categories including their posts with low quality content. After deleting the categories, Google Webmaster Tools is reporting some 404 errors about the RSS Feeds for the deleted categories. I've created a 404.php file inside my theme and placed the following code header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
Technical SEO | | Trigun
header("Location: http://www.mysite.com/My404Page/", true, 301);
exit();
?> this have catched all 404 errors and redirected them to the specific page. Unfortunately, it could not catch the inactive feed urls. Is there a way to do this so that all inactive feeds will be redirected to my 404 page? Thanks in advance....0 -
Add to Cart Link
We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>
Technical SEO | | Aspedia0