Generating 404 Errors but the Pages Exist
-
Hey
I have recently come across an issue with several of a sites urls being seen as a 404 by bots such as Xenu, SEOMoz, Google Web Tools etc. The funny thing is, the pages exist and display fine.
This happens on many of the pages which use the Modx CMS, but the index is fine. The wordpress blog in /blog/ all works fine.
The only thing I can think of is that I have a conflict in the htaccess, but troubleshooting this is difficult, any tool I have found online seem useless.
Have tried to rollback to previous versions but still does not work.
Anyone had any experience of similar issues?
Many thanks
K.
-
FYI, we finally found our error. The short URL turned out to be the same name as the folder (photo-gallery) so once this was changed, wordpress was able to access the correct path. A bit of custom javascript had to be amended as well, but that was limited to our custom code. Using your web-sniffer.net link we were able to test immediately and fix it fairly quickly. Thank you for your help!
-
That's true Ryan I guess it is coding related really.
Issues like this are a real pain in the ass. And most people don't even check WMT to realise the issues exist. TBH, I don't check as often as I should.
-
I agree with you Paul.
As you pointed out one possible cause is a CMS-related issue which I would refer to as "coding" meaning something in the code which was used to present the website. Perhaps there is a better way to phrase it but nothing comes to mind at the moment.
Another possibility you mentioned is Litespeed which would be a server-side issue directly. Either way, it is a legitimate issue which should be addressed.
-
FWIW, I don't think it's a coding issue. If it were coding, it would either show a 200OK or it would show a 404. It wouldn't sometimes serve a 404.
If you're using Litespeed, I'd guarantee that is the issue and if you're using Joomla, it's another prime culprit.
-
Please keep in mind, that 404 error does not mean the page doesn't exist. It means your server, is sending a response code to indicate that it doesn't exist.
When I installed Litespeed on my server, this issue happened over and over again.
I believe Joomla for example, has some kind of security module that serves a 404 if a single IP requests a page too many times. I remember running SEOFrog on a friends Joomla site and tons of 404's were showing up.
-
Dev team are looking into it, must be quite a complex htaccess issue. Will get to the bottom of it this week and post any findings.
-
Thanks Ryan! I will get it looked at...Sue
-
@DentalID, the same reply I offered to Guy applies for you as well. This is an SEO issue which does need to be fixed. Something on your end is causing the page to show with a 403 response code. You really need a programmer to get in there and determine the root cause of the issue. You could try asking your web host if you have managed hosting, but this level of assistance would normally be outside the support of managed hosting.
-
Guy,
In looking at the page this appears to be a legitimate problem. Your server settings allow you to present a page with any header code you wish. You can 301 a page but still present the page with a 200 code if you want. Presently it appears the page is being presented fine but your server is offering a 404 header code.
I can't tell the actual source of the problem other then to say it appears to be on your end and should be fixed. I originally looked at the code with the MOZbar but then checked independently with another tool as well. http://web-sniffer.net/
All tools show a 404 header code for the page. This response code is generated by your web server.
-
We are having a similar problem with this URL: http://dentalimplantsportland.com/photo-gallery/ and also the following locations:
http://cosmeticdentistportland.net/photo-gallery/
http://dentalveneersportland.com/photo-gallery/
SEO Moz and Google webmaster tools show it as a 403 error but the pages display fine. I am not able to tell if this is really a problem for SEO or if we should reconstruct this gallery system and would really love your input.
This is Wordpress with a Spry gallery...
Thanks so much!
-
It is just a small affiliate site I am looking at - this page creates a 404.
http://www.insure-uk.com/post-office-car-insurance.html
Currently testing on some beta servers. Hopefully should fix soon as otherwise it will lose indexation.
-
I also see this now and again, but next crawl they fix themselfs. i assume robots can not always reach page for a number of reasons
-
Can you offer an example of a URL which is causing this problem?
-
I have had the same issues, I think it is often the bot's problem
Just to be certain check your links are correct and manually test them. Also ensure your sitemap is up to date and that you are not blocking the crawlers with metarobots, robots.txt, or some weird stuff in htaccess.
I have found that renaming pages or moving them will often cause 404 issues with crawlers
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
-
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
Is it bad practice to create pages that 404?
We have member pages on our site that are initially empty, until the member does some activity. Currently, since all of these pages are soft 404s, we return a 404 for all these pages and all internal links to them are js links (not links as far as bots are concerned). As soon as the page has content, we switch it to 200 and make the links into regular hrefs. After doing some research, I started thinking that this is not the best way to handle this situation. A better idea would be to noindex/follow the pages (before they have content) and let the links to these pages be real links. I'd love to hear input and feedback from fellow Mozzers. What are your thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YairSpolter0 -
Will Using Attributes For Landing Pages In Magento Dilute Page Rank?
Hello Mozzers! We have an ecommerce site built on Magento. We would like to use attribute filters in our layered navigation for landing page purposes. Each page will have a unique URL, Meta Title and Meta Description. For example: URL: domain.com/art/abstract (category is Art, attribute is Abstract) Title: Abstract Art For Sale Meta: Blah Blah Blah Currently these attribute pages are not being indexed by google as they are set in google parameters. We would like to edit google parameters to start indexing some of the attribute filters that users search for, so they can be used as landing pages. Does anyone have experience with this? Is this a good idea? What are the consequences? Will this dilute Page Rank? Could this destroy the world? Cheers! MozAddict
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozAddict0 -
Should We Add the W3.org Language Tag To Every Page Or Just The Home Page?
Greetings, We have five international sites around the world, two of which are in difference languages. Currently we have the following line of html code on the home page of each of the sites: Clearly, we need to change the "en" portion for the sites that aren't in English, but, should we include that meta tag in each of the site's pages, or will the home page suffice. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CSawatzky0 -
On Page vs Off Page - Which Has a Greater Effect on Rankings?
Hi Mozzers, My site will be migrating to a new domain soon, and I am not sure how to spend my time. Should I be optimizing our content for keywords, improving internal linking, and writing new content - or should I be doing link building for our current domain (or the new one)? Is there a certain ratio that determines rankings which can help me prioritize these to-dos?, such as 70:30 in favor of link-building? Thanks for any help you can offer!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Getting individual website pages to rank for their targeted terms instead of just the home page
Hi Everyone, There is a pattern which I have noticed when trying to get individual pages to rank for the allocated targeted terms when I execute an SEO campaign and would been keen on anyones thoughts on how they have effectively addressed this. Let me try and explain this by going through an example: Let's say I am a business coach and already have a website where it includes several of my different coaching services. Now for this SEO campaign, I'm looking to improve exposure for the clients "business coaching" services. I have a quick look at analytics and rankings and notice that the website already ranks fairly well for that term but from the home page and not the service page. I go through the usual process of optimising the site (on-page - content, meta data, internal linking) as well as a linkbuilding campaign throughout the next couple of month's, however this results in either just the home page improving or the business page does improve, but the homepage's existing ranking has suffered, therefore not benefiting the site overall. My question: If a term already ranks or receives a decent amount of traffic from the home page and not from the page that its supposed to, why do you think its the case and what would you be your approach to try shift the traffic to the individual page, without impacting the site too much?. Note: To add the home page keyword target term would have been updated? Thanks, Vahe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
Dynamic pages - ecommerce product pages
Hi guys, Before I dive into my question, let me give you some background.. I manage an ecommerce site and we're got thousands of product pages. The pages contain dynamic blocks and information in these blocks are fed by another system. So in a nutshell, our product team enters the data in a software and boom, the information is generated in these page blocks. But that's not all, these pages then redirect to a duplicate version with a custom URL. This is cached and this is what the end user sees. This was done to speed up load, rather than the system generate a dynamic page on the fly, the cache page is loaded and the user sees it super fast. Another benefit happened as well, after going live with the cached pages, they started getting indexed and ranking in Google. The problem is that, the redirect to the duplicate cached page isn't a permanent one, it's a meta refresh, a 302 that happens in a second. So yeah, I've got 302s kicking about. The development team can set up 301 but then there won't be any caching, pages will just load dynamically. Google records pages that are cached but does it cache a dynamic page though? Without a cached page, I'm wondering if I would drop in traffic. The view source might just show a list of dynamic blocks, no content! How would you tackle this? I've already setup canonical tags on the cached pages but removing cache.. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Do in page links pointing to the parent page make the page more relevant for that term?
Here's a technical question. Suppose I have a page relevant to the term "Mobile Phones". I have a piece of text, on that page talking about "mobile phones", and within that text is the term "cell phones". Now if I link the text "cell phones", to the page it is already placed on (ie the parent page) - will the page gain more relevancy for the term "cell phones"?? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770