404 not working?
-
Apologies - not strictly a search question, although I am concerned that it may be negatively impacting my sites.
If I enter an invalid URL - the "page not found 404 error" doesn't seem to be working. I can enter http://www.%sitename%/index.php/randomnamemadeup/ and it displays the homepage (albeit with a broken CSS).
I can't fathom it out - any help appreciated. Thanks, David
-
I haven't created one - no.
-
Have you made a custom 404 page? If so, yes.
-
Agree - is this likely to sit in htaccess configuration?
-
I would suggest you to fix this issue soon. Otherwise Google may report soft 404 error at one fine day.
Also check your redirect rules. Redirecting error pages to home page should be avoided.
-
Hi Martijn, I seem to have the same issue across a number of my PHP sites.
An industry friend that I link to brought the issue to my attention - he dropped me a line to highlight that alot of these random pages are shown to be linking to his site - rather than just the homepage. I haven't managed to catch up with him to ask where this linking data has come from yet.
Apologies if I haven't explained this very well, but this is high on my list of things I'd like to fix.
- Appreciate there are other things I need to do on this website.
Thanks, David
-
Hi David,
It's not very cool that random urls are not responding with a 404 status code error. But for now I think you have other items to fix first. Because as long as you're not linking external or internal to these 'broken pages' also Google isn't able to find them. And so won't think the site has a lot of soft 404 errors. To be sure the best would be to take a look at the crawl errors within your Google Webmaster Tools account. If there are a lot of recent (soft) 404 pages/ errors found by Google I would move this more to the top of my todo list.
I would prefer myself to fix them later on, but like many things you probably have a lot of other todos you want to take care of first.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Marisa, try http://www.videogameprices.co.uk/index.php/randomulr/.
Many thanks.
-
We'd need to know your domain name so we can replicate the error.
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
-
Crawl errors - 2,513 not found. Response code 404
Hi,
Technical SEO | | JamesHancocks1
I've just inherited a website that I'll be looking after. I've looked in the Search Console in the Crawl errors section and discovered thousands of urls that point to non- existent pages on Desktop. There's 1,128 on Smartphone.
Some are odd and make no sense. for example: | bdfqgnnl-z3543-qh-i39634-imbbfuceonkqrihpbptd/ | Not sure why these have are occurring but what's the best way to deal with them to improve our SEO? | northeast/ | 404 | 8/29/18 |
| | 2 | blog/2016/06/27/top-tips-for-getting-started-with-the-new-computing-curriculum/ | 404 | 8/10/18 |
| | 3 | eastmidlands | 404 | 8/21/18 |
| | 4 | eastmidlands/partner-schools/pingle-school/ | 404 | 8/27/18 |
| | 5 | z3540-hyhyxmw-i18967-fr/ | 404 | 8/19/18 |
| | 6 | northeast/jobs/maths-teacher-4/ | 404 | 8/24/18 |
| | 7 | qfscmpp-z3539-i967-mw/ | 404 | 8/29/18 |
| | 8 | manchester/jobs/history-teacher/ | 404 | 8/5/18 |
| | 9 | eastmidlands/jobs/geography-teacher-4/ | 404 | 8/30/18 |
| | 10 | resources | 404 | 8/26/18 |
| | 11 | blog/2016/03/01/world-book-day-how-can-you-get-your-pupils-involved/ | 404 | 8/31/18 |
| | 12 | onxhtltpudgjhs-z3548-i4967-mnwacunkyaduobb/ | Cheers.
Thanks in advance,
James.0 -
404 Pages increasing day by day. Why??
Please look at my website, 404 Pages suddenly increasing in number. I have looked at the google webmaster tool and found it showing all my URLs in wrong format. This page is also not working I attached webmaster screenshot as well
Technical SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Both links with ".html" and without are working , Is that a problem ?
Default format of my url ending with ".html" , I know it's not a problem .. But both links with ".html" and without are working , Is that critical problem or not ? and how to solve it ?
Technical SEO | | Mohamed_Samer0 -
Https and 404 code that goes into htaccess
The 404 error code we put into htaccess files for our websites does not work correctly for our https site. We recently changed one of our http sites to https. When we went to create a 404.html page for it by creating an htaccess folder with the 404 error code in it, once we uploaded the file all of our webpages were displaying incorrectly, as if the css was not attached. The 404 code we used works successfully for our other 404.html pages for our other sites (www.telfordinc.com/404.html). However, it does not work for the https site. Below is the 404 error code we are using for our https site (currently not uploaded until pages display correctly) ErrorDocument 404 /404-error.html RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.)?privatemoneyhardmoneyloan.com/.*$ [NC] RewriteRule .(gif|jpg|js|css)$ - [F] Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.privatemoneyhardmoneyloan.com$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.privatemoneyhardmoneyloan.com/$1 [R=301,L] So we want to know if there is a different 404 error code that goes into the htaccess file for an https vs. http? Appreciate your feedback on this issue
Technical SEO | | Manifestation0 -
Will deleting Wordpress tags result in 404 errors or anything?
I want to clean up my tags and I'm worried I'm going to look in my webmasters the next day with hundreds of errors. Whats the best way of doing this?
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
Cache Not Working on Our Site
We redesigned our site (www.motivators.com) back in April. Ever since then, we can't view the cache. It loads as a blank, white page but the cache text is at the top saying: "This is Google's cache of http://www.motivators.com/. It is a snapshot of the page as it appeared on Jul 22, 2013 15:50:40 GMT. The current page could have changed in the meantime. Learn more. Tip: To quickly find your search term on this page, press Ctrl+F or ⌘-F (Mac) and use the find bar." Has anyone else ever seen this happen? Any ideas as to why it's happening? Could it be hurting us? Advice, tips, suggestions would be very much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Motivators0 -
Should we redirect 404 errrors seen in webmaster tools with ... (dot.dot,dot) ?
Lately I have seen lots of 404 errors showing in webmaster tools that are not really links. Many of them from shammy pages. (I did not put them there) One of the most common types is ones that show the link ending in ... ( dot, dot, dot) The appearance of the link is being sent from pages like this http://www.the-pick.com/00_fahrenheit,2.html For example a link like this would show up in webmaster tools as a 404 error. http://www.ehow.com/how_2352088_easily-... Are these worth redirecting? So far I have redirected some of them and found that is was not helpful and possibly harmful. Anyone else had the same experience? Also getting lots of partial urls showing up from pages that reference my site but the url is cut off and the link is not active. Does Google really count these as links? Is redirecting a link from a spammy page acknowledging acceptance and could it count against you?
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
Hundreds of 404 Pages, What Should I do?
Hi, My client just had there website redeveloped within wordpress. I just ran a crawl errors test for their website using Google Webmasters. I discovered that the client has about six hundred, 404 pages. Most of the error pages originated from their previous image gallery. I already have a custom 404 page set-up, but is there something else I should be doing? Is it worth while to 301 redirect every single page within the .htaccess file, or will Google filter these pages out of its index naturally? Thanks Mozers!
Technical SEO | | calindaniel0