Moz & Xenu Link Sleuth unable to crawl a website (403 error)
-
It could be that I am missing something really obvious however we are getting the following error when we try to use the Moz tool on a client website. (I have read through a few posts on 403 errors but none that appear to be the same problem as this)
Moz Result
Title 403 : Error
Meta Description 403 Forbidden
Meta Robots_Not present/empty_
Meta Refresh_Not present/empty_
Xenu Link Sleuth Result
Broken links, ordered by link:
error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s): Thanks in advance!
-
Hey Liam,
Thanks for following up. Unfortunately, we use thousands of dynamic IPs through Amazon Web Services to run our crawler and the IP would change from crawl to crawl. We don't even have a set range for the IPs we use through AWS.
As for throttling, we don't have a set throttle. We try to space out the server hits enough to not bring down the server, but then hit the server as often as necessary in order to crawl the full site or crawl limit in a reasonable amount of time. We try to find a balance between hitting the site too hard and having extremely long crawl times. If the devs are worried about how often we hit the server, they can add a crawl delay of 10 to the robots.txt to throttle the crawler. We will respect that delay.
If the devs use Moz, as well, they would also be getting a 403 on their crawl because the server is blocking our user agent specifically. The server would give the same status code regardless of who has set up the campaign.
I'm sorry this information isn't more specific. Please let me know if you need any other assistance.
Chiaryn
-
Hi Chiaryn
The sage continues....this is the response my client got back from the developers - please could you let me have the answers to the two questions?
Apparently as part of their ‘SAF’ (?) protocols, if the IT director sees a big spike in 3<sup>rd</sup> party products trawling the site he will block them! They did say that they use moz too. What they’ve asked me to get from moz is:
- Moz IP address/range
- Level of throttling they will use
I would question that if THEY USE MOZ themselves why would they need these answers but if I go back with that I will be going around in circles - any chance of letting me know the answer(s)?
Thanks in advance.
Liam
-
Awesome - thank you.
Kind Regards
Liam
-
Hey There,
The robots.txt shouldn't really affect 403s; you would actually get a "blocked by robots.txt" error if that was the cause. Your server is basically telling us that we are not authorized to access your site. I agree with Mat that we are most likely being blocked in the htaccess file. It may be that your server is flagging our crawler and Xenu's crawler as troll crawlers or something along those lines. I ran a test on your URL using a non-existent crawler, Rogerbot with a capital R, and got a 200 status code back but when I run the test with our real crawler, rogerbot with a lowercase r, I get the 403 error (http://screencast.com/t/Sv9cozvY2f01). This tells me that the server is specifically blocking our crawler, but not all crawlers in general.
I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Chiaryn
Help Team Ninja -
Hi Mat
Thanks for the reply - robots.txt file is as follows:
## The following are infinitely deep trees User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin Disallow: /cms/events Disallow: /cms/latest Disallow: /cms/cookieprivacy Disallow: /cms/help Disallow: /site/services/megamenu/ Disallow: /site/mobile/ I can't get access to the .htaccess file at present (we're not the developers) Anyone else any thoughts? Weirdly I can get Screaming Frog info back on the site :-/
-
403s are tricky to diagnose because they, by their very nature, don't tell you much. They're sort of the server equivalent of just shouting "NO!".
You say Moz & Xenu are receiving the 403. I assume that it loads properly from a browser.
I'd start looking at the .htaccess . Any odd deny statements in there? It could be that an IP range or user agent is blocked. Some people like to block common crawlers (Not calling Roger names there). Check the robots.txt whilst you are there, although that shouldn't return a 403 really.
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
-
I got an 803 error yesterday on the Moz crawl for most of my pages. The page loads normally in the browser. We are hosted on shopify
I got an 803 error yesterday on the Moz crawl for most of my pages. The page loads normally in the browser. We are hosted on shopify, the url is www.solester.com please help us out
Moz Pro | | vasishta0 -
Whether or not to remove a link from a website with high spam score on Open Site Explorer
Hello Moz! I just subscribed for your Moz Pro program. Amazing stuff! On open site explorer, I found a number of links to my site from a page called with a very high page authority and high domain authority, but also a high spam score (8 or 9, one with a 10). I say multiple spam scores, because it's strange, there are what appears variations of the same url, and each one is considered a link. For instance, there's an abc.linkstomysite.com and xyz.linktomysite.com, and 123.linktomysite.com... there are about 15 of these (all with the spam scores mentioned above)! This must have been some old SEO work done I payed for back in the prehistoric SEO days. However, my fear is the following: Removing these links, and then losing some potentially strong link juice. I don't have many high DA or PA links to my site, and these are some major ones. The domain in question "linktomysite.com", when entered into OSE, only has a spam score of 4, and it has a domain authority of 45 and page authority of 37. My site has a spam score of 2 and no messages from google regarding a penalty, but an overall reduction in google traffic over the years (just keeps slowly dropping... as if a weight is pulling me down?) What do you think, should I leave, or remove? The linkstomysite page is just a LONG page full of links, with short descriptions, nothing of value, but with a an old domain age (relatively). Most important for me is keeping at least some ranking/visibility, while I personally work on building quality links and helpful content. thanks!
Moz Pro | | DavidC.0 -
Lag time between MOZ crawl and report notification?
I did a lot of work to one of my sites last week and eagerly awaited this week's MOZ report to confirm that I had achieved what I was trying to do, but alas I still see the same errors and warnings in the latest report. This was supposedly generated five days AFTER I made the changes, so why are they not apparent in the new report? I am mainly referring to missing metadata, long page titles, duplicate content and duplicate title errors (due to crawl and URL issues). Why would the new crawl not have picked up that these have been corrected? Does it rely on some other crawl having updated (e.g. Google or Bing)?
Moz Pro | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Unable to crawl pages
Hi, I am trying to set up a campaign for our website - www.salvationarmy.org.au however, I can't seem to get a scan of more than three pages. I have tried the following: www.salvationarmy.org.au (only 2 pages) www.salvationarmy.org.au/home (only 1 page) salvationarmy.org.au (only 3 pages) There is a geo IP redirect on www.salvationarmy.org.au but the second domain listed above should resolve the full site. I'm a newbie to SEOmoz so any help would be appreciated! Thanks, Mel
Moz Pro | | KingPings0 -
Initiate crawl
Anyway to start the crawl of a site immediately after changes have been made? Or must you wait for the next scheduled crawl? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | dave_whatsthebigidea.com0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
The SeoMoz site crawler says all my pages have too many links. I am using Dreamweaver with a horizontal Spry drop-down menu bar. My site has several hundred pages and about 100 of them show up in this Spry menu bar. I believe that this would be considered a false positive for too many links - am I right? Or is Google seeing this also as too many links per page? I am trying to get my Google rankings back after being hurt badly by the Penguin. I am using php but don't see another way to do the site links without going to a CMS type site. Thanks for any help you can give.
Moz Pro | | johnsearles0 -
Crawl Rate for Lower Page Authority Websites
Hi,At thumbtack.com we get tons of links from low (or no) page authority websites, and I'm wondering what the crawl rate of those links looks like. I know Google pulls in the web at an astonishing rate, but I'd imagine they aren't re-crawling lower PA very frequently.Are they discovering these links a week after they're posted? A month? More? I spent a while looking around for histograms of actual crawl rates and found surprisingly little. I'd love to see average crawl rate by Domain or Page Authority if that exists anywhere.
Moz Pro | | Thumbtack
Thanks!-MichaelP.S. Here are some random examples of the types of pages with inbound links I'm talking about. Normally we wouldn't spend too much time thinking about these, but there's just so many of them we can't ignore it!- http://www.majestic-cleaners.webs.com/- http://domchieraphotography.blogspot.com/- http://charlottepiano.musicteachershelper.com/- http://pin-upgirlphotography.vpweb.com/default.html- http://jfaithful.weebly.com/0 -
Initial Crawl Questions
Hello. I just joined and used the Crawl tool. I have many questions and hoping the community can offer some guidance. 1. I received an Excel file with 3k+ records. Is there a friendly online viewer for the Crawl report? Or is the Excel file the only output? 2. Assuming the Excel file is the only output, the Time Crawled is a number (i.e. 1305798581). I have tried changing the field to a date/time format but that did not work. How can I view the field as a normal date/time such as May 15, 2011 14:02? 3. I use the ™ symbol in my Title. This symbol appears in the output as a few ascii characters. Is that a concern? Should I remove the trademark symbol from my Title? 4. I am using XenForo forum software. All forum threads automatically receive a Title Tag and Meta Description as part of a template. The Crawl Test report shows my Title Tag and Meta Description as blank for many threads. I have looked at the source code of several pages and they all have clean Title tags and I don't understand why the Crawl Report doesn't show them. Any ideas? 5. In some cases the HTTP Status Code field shows a result of "3". Why does that mean? 6. For every URL in the Crawl Report there is an entry in the Referrer field. What exactly is the relationship between these fields? I thought the Crawl Tool would inspect every page on the site. If a page doesn't have a referring page is it missed? What if a page has multiple referring pages? How is that information displayed? 7. Under Google Webmaster Tools > Site Configurations > Settings > Parameter Handling I have the options set as either "Ignore" or "Let Google Decide" for various URL parameters. These are "pages" of my site which should mostly be ignored. For example a forum may have 7 headers, each on of which can be sorted in ascending or descending order. The only page that matters is the initial page. All the rest should be ignored by Google and the Crawl. Presently there are 11 records for many pages which really should only have one record due to these various sort parameters. Can I configure the crawl so it ignores parameter pages? I am anxious to get started on my site. I dove into the crawl results and it's just too messy in it's present state for me to pull out any actionable data. Any guidance would be appreciated.
Moz Pro | | RyanKent0