Confused about repeated occurences of URL/essayorg/topic/ showing up as 404 errors in our site logs
-
Working on a Wordpress website, https://thedoctorwithin.comScanning the site’s 404 errors, I’m seeing a lot of searches for URL/essayorg/topic, coming from Bingbot, as well as other spiders (Google, OpensiteExlorer). We get at least 200 of these irrelevant requests per week. Seems like each topic that follows /essayorg/ is unique. Some include typos: /dissitation/Haven't done a verification to make sure the spiders are who they say they are, yet.Almost seems like there are many links ‘in the wild’ intended for Essay.Org that are being directed towards the site I’m working on.I've considered redirecting any requests for URL/essayorg/ to our sitemap… figuring that might encourage further spidering of actual site content.
- Is redirection to our sitemap xml file a good idea, or might doing so have unintended consequences?
- Interested in suggestions about why this might be occurring.
Thank you.
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
-
Weird 404 errors in Webmaster Tools
Hi, In a regular check with Webmaster Tools, I have noticed some weird 404 errors, for example, my domain URL is something like http://domainname.com/, the 404 error points to some weird URLs like http://domainname.com/james-bond&page=2/ and http://domainname.com/juegos-de&page=3/, at first I have tried to block them by robots.txt, but now I am getting these kind of 404 errors a lot, and don't think blocking them all is a perfect solution. Can anyone help me out with the issue? Thank you in advance.
Technical SEO | | nishthaj
cheers.0 -
URLs with dashes between words or nothing at all? ( ../some-content vs. ../somecontent)
Here's a quick and easy question: Is there any problem with not using dashes in between words for URLs? Obviously the readability factor is a concern, but from a search engine standpoint? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | tbinga0 -
Unique URLs for each local office 301 to parent site
I have a dentist who has multiple locations and a unique domain for each location. www.DentalCareofLacey.com www.DentalCareofSumner.com www.DentalCareofVashon.com The current plan is to setup 301s to redirect to the parent site (www.atlasdentistry.com/locations/lacey). Would there be any negative impact if we continue to purchase a unique domain for each branch office and just set it as a 301 to the parent site? Does having too many 301 redirects look too spammy to Google?
Technical SEO | | marlattts0 -
Blog.furnacefilterscanada.com/ or furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/
My shopping cart does not allow to instal a WordPress blog on a sub-domain like: furnacefilterscanada.com/blog/ But I can host my blog on another server with a sub-domain like: blog.furnacefilterscanada.com In a SEO point of view is there a difference between the 2? Link juice? Page authority? Thank you, BigBlaze
Technical SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Numerous 404 errors on crawl diagnostics (non existent pages)..
As new as them come to SEO so please be gentle.... I have a wordpress site setup for my photography business. Looking at my crawl diagnostics I see several 4xx (client error) alerts. These all show up to non existent pages on my site IE: | http://www.robertswanigan.com/happy-birthday-sara/109,97,105,108,116,111,58,104,116,116,112,58,47,47,109,97,105,108,116,111,58,105,110,102,111,64,114,111,98,101,114,116,115,119,97,110,105,103,97,110,46,99,111,109 | Totally lost on what could be causing this. Thanks in advance for any help!
Technical SEO | | Swanny8110 -
How do I stop www.mysite.com/ showing as a duplicate of www.mysite.com
I have run the campaigns software over a site and it is showing that www.mysite.com/ is a duplicate of www.mysite.com, how do I correct this? Is it a genuine duplicate page? My first thought was to use rel canonical but there is no page called / to put it on. Your suggestions welcomed Sean
Technical SEO | | ske110 -
SEO MOZ report showing duplicate content pages with without ending /
Hello the SEOMOZ report is showing me I have a lot of duplicate content and then proceeds listing almost every page on my site as showing with a URL with an ending "/" and without. I checked my sitemap and only one version is there, the one with "/". I have a Wordpress site. Any recommendations ? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | dpaq20110
