Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. 404 error - but I can't find any broken links on the referrer pages

    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.

    404 error - but I can't find any broken links on the referrer pages

    Technical SEO
    4
    12
    3454
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • PooleyK
      PooleyK last edited by

      Hi,

      My crawl has diagnosed a client's site with eight 404 errors.

      In my CSV download of the crawl, I have checked the source code of the 'referrer' pages, but can't find where the link to the 404 error page is. Could there be another reason for getting 404 errors?

      Thanks for your help.

      Katharine.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • IainReloadMedia
        IainReloadMedia @IainReloadMedia last edited by

        Are you getting any crawl errors in Google Webmaster tools?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • PooleyK
          PooleyK @KeriMorgret last edited by

          Thank you. I will do.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • KeriMorgret
            KeriMorgret last edited by

            Xenu looks good to me for that page as well. I'd do an-demand crawl for that page/site from http://pro.seomoz.org/tools/crawl-test and if it's still showing up, send an email to help@seomoz.org so we can look and see if there's an error in the crawl software.

            Thanks!

            PooleyK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • PooleyK
              PooleyK @IainReloadMedia last edited by

              Thanks! At least I know I am not going blind! No, the CSV came from SEO Moz's report.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • IainReloadMedia
                IainReloadMedia @IainReloadMedia last edited by

                Hi Sarah,

                I wasn't able to find errors on that page. Just to confirm the CSV of the crawl, is that coming from Google Webmasters?

                Iain

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • PooleyK
                  PooleyK @IainReloadMedia last edited by

                  Hi Iain,

                  Thanks for your help. The site was recrawled on the weekend after attempted updates had been made and I downloaded a new CSV. The broken links are still showing and I still can't find where they are on the page?!

                  Screaming Frog has not shown up any errors however.

                  Not sure what else to do! Were you able to see any broken links in the example URLs I posted above?

                  Many thanks,

                  Katharine.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • IainReloadMedia
                    IainReloadMedia @PooleyK last edited by

                    When was the CSV download of the crawl taken? Have any changes been made to that page since?

                    Did the same 404 show up when you used Screaming Frog?

                    Thanks

                    Iain - Reload Media

                    PooleyK IainReloadMedia 4 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • PooleyK
                      PooleyK last edited by

                      I wondered if it would help if I got more specific.

                      For example, this 404 error link

                      http://www.soccer2000.com/store/X10498!ADI/CONDIVO%2B12%2B3/4%2BPANT

                      Is supposedly found on this page:

                      http://www.soccer2000.com/store/cat/APP/APPAREL

                      But I can't find it anywhere - any ideas why?

                      Thanks again.

                      IainReloadMedia 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • PooleyK
                        PooleyK @Gyorgy last edited by

                        Thanks! Fingers crossed this is what caused it.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • IainReloadMedia
                          IainReloadMedia last edited by

                          Hi Katherine,

                          Try using Screaming Frog SEO software to crawl you site. That should pick up if you have a incorrect internal links.

                          For external links pointing to none existent pages, try Majestic SEO. It has the largest amount of link data (Sorry Open Site Explorer, but you know it's true).

                          Hope that helps

                          Iain - Reload Media

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • Gyorgy
                            Gyorgy last edited by

                            The crawl runs once a week, so maybe the broken links have been corrected since the last report. Wait for the next report and check if they still appear.

                            PooleyK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • 1 / 1
                            • First post
                              Last post

                            Got a burning SEO question?

                            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                            Start my free trial


                            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.

                            • See all categories

                            Related Questions

                            • AliMac26

                              Duplicate content and 404 errors

                              I apologize in advance, but I am an SEO novice and my understanding of code is very limited. Moz has issued a lot (several hundred) of duplicate content and 404 error flags on the ecommerce site my company takes care of. For the duplicate content, some of the pages it says are duplicates don't even seem similar to me. additionally, a lot of them are static pages we embed images of size charts that we use as popups on item pages. it says these issues are high priority but how bad is this? Is this just an issue because if a page has similar content the engine spider won't know which one to index? also, what is the best way to handle these urls bringing back 404 errors? I should probably have a developer look at these issues but I wanted to ask the extremely knowledgeable Moz community before I do 🙂

                              Technical SEO | | AliMac26
                              0
                            • ReSEOlve

                              404 errors

                              Hi I am getting these show up in WMT crawl error any help would be very much appreciated | ?escaped_fragment=Meditation-find-peace-within/csso/55991bd90cf2efdf74ec3f60 | 404 | 12/5/15 |
                              | | 2 | mobile/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
                              | | 3 | ?escaped_fragment=Tips-for-a-balanced-lifestyle/csso/1 | 404 | 12/1/15 |
                              | | 4 | ?escaped_fragment=My-favorite-yoga-spot/csso/5598e2130cf2585ebcde3b9a | 404 | 12/1/15 |
                              | | 5 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6 | 404 | 11/29/15 |
                              | | 6 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Tag/yoga | 404 | 11/30/15 |
                              | | 7 | ?escaped_fragment=Inhale-exhale-and-once-again/csso/2 | 404 | 11/27/15 |
                              | | 8 | ?escaped_fragment=classes/covl | 404 | 10/29/15 |
                              | | 9 | m/?escaped_fragment= | 404 | 10/26/15 |
                              | | 10 | ?escaped_fragment=blog/c19s6/Page/1 | 404 | 11/30/15 | |   |

                              Technical SEO | | ReSEOlve
                              0
                            • Oxfordcomma

                              Increase 404 errors or 301 redirects?

                              Hi all, I'm working on an e-commerce site that sells products that may only be available for a certain period of time. Eg. A product may only be selling for 1 year and then be permanently out of stock. When a product goes out of stock, the page is removed from the site regardless of any links it may have gotten over time. I am trying to figure out the best way to handle these permanently out of stock pages. At the moment, the site is set up to return a 404 page for each of these products. There are currently 600 (and increasing) instances of this appearing on Google Webmasters. I have read that too many 404 errors may have a negative impact on your site, and so thought I might 301 redirect these URLs to a more appropriate page. However I've also read that too many 301 redirects may have a negative impact on your site. I foresee this to be an issue several years down the road when the site has thousands of expired products which will result in thousands of 404 errors or 301 redirects depending on which route I take. Which would be the better route? Is there a better solution?

                              Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma
                              0
                            • danatanseo

                              We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?

                              We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com  - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com  The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators  do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators  but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!

                              Technical SEO | | danatanseo
                              0
                            • reallyitsme

                              Adding 'NoIndex Meta' to Prestashop Module & Search pages.

                              Hi Looking for a fix for the PrestaShop platform Look for the definitive answer on how to best stop the indexing of PrestaShop modules such as "send to a friend", "Best Sellers" and site search pages. We want to be able to add a meta noindex ()to pages ending in: /search?tag=ball&p=15 or /modules/sendtoafriend/sendtoafriend-form.php We already have in the robot text: Disallow: /search.php
                              Disallow: /modules/ (Google seems to ignore these) But as a further tool we would like to incude the noindex to all these pages too to stop duplicated pages. I assume this needs to be in either the head.tpl or the .php file of each PrestaShop module.? Or is there a general site wide code fix to put in the metadata to apply' Noindex Meta' to certain files. Current meta code here: Please reply with where to add code and what the code should be. Thanks in advance.

                              Technical SEO | | reallyitsme
                              0
                            • EugeneF

                              404 crawl errors from "tel:" link?

                              I am seeing thousands of 404 errors.  Each of the urls is like this: abc.com/abc123/tel:1231231234 Everything is normal about that url except the "/tel:1231231234" these urls are bad with the tel: extension, they are good without it. The only place I can find this character string is on each page we have this code which is used for Iphones and such.  What are we doing wrong? Code: Phone: <a href="[tel:1231231234](tel:7858411943)"> (123) 123-1234a>

                              Technical SEO | | EugeneF
                              0
                            • AJ234

                              404 errors on non-existent URLs

                              Hey guys and gals, First Moz Q&A for me and really looking forward to being part of the community. I hope as my first question this isn't a stupid one but I was just struggling to find any resource that dealt with the issue and am just looking for some general advice. Basically a client has raised a problem with 404 error pages - or the lack thereof- on non-existent URLs on their site; let's say for example: 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towels/asdfas' Obviously content never existed on this page so its not like you're saying 'hey, sorry this isn't here anymore'; its more like- 'there was never anything here in the first place'. Currently in this fictitious example typing in 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towels/asdfas**'** returns the same content as the 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towels' page which I appreciate isn't ideal. What I was wondering is how far do you take this issue- I've seen examples here on the seomoz site where you can edit the URI in a similar manner and it returns the same content as the parent page but with the alternate address. Should 404's be added across all folders on a site in a similar way? How often would this scenario be and issue particularly for internal pages two or three clicks down? I suppose unless someone linked to a page with a misspelled URL... Also would it be worth placing 301 redirects on a small number of common mis-spellings or typos e.g. 'greatbeachtowels.com/beach-towles' to the correct URLs as opposed to just 404s? Many thanks in advance.

                              Technical SEO | | AJ234
                              0
                            • glennfriesen

                              Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?

                              If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg

                              Technical SEO | | glennfriesen
                              1

                            Get started with Moz Pro!

                            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                            Start my free trial
                            Products
                            • Moz Pro
                            • Moz Local
                            • Moz API
                            • Moz Data
                            • STAT
                            • Product Updates
                            Moz Solutions
                            • SMB Solutions
                            • Agency Solutions
                            • Enterprise Solutions
                            Free SEO Tools
                            • Domain Authority Checker
                            • Link Explorer
                            • Keyword Explorer
                            • Competitive Research
                            • Brand Authority Checker
                            • Local Citation Checker
                            • MozBar Extension
                            • MozCast
                            Resources
                            • Blog
                            • SEO Learning Center
                            • Help Hub
                            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                            • How-to Guides
                            • Moz Academy
                            • API Docs
                            About Moz
                            • About
                            • Team
                            • Careers
                            • Contact
                            Why Moz
                            • Case Studies
                            • Testimonials
                            Get Involved
                            • Become an Affiliate
                            • MozCon
                            • Webinars
                            • Practical Marketer Series
                            • MozPod
                            Connect with us

                            Contact the Help team

                            Join our newsletter
                            Moz logo
                            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                            • Accessibility
                            • Terms of Use
                            • Privacy

                            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.