Thanks Nicolas & Ruth. I realized the reason the pages are triggering errors is because there are published pages linking to those posts in draft. I imagine those draft posts were live at some point and then put back into draft.

Im guessing if I kill all the links to those draft posts that will fix the issue.

Hey All,

Both MOZ & Webmaster tools have identified 403 errors on an editorial site I work with (using Drupal CMS). I looked into the errors and the pages triggering the 403 are all articles in draft status that are not being indexed. If I am not logged into our drupal and I try to access an article in draft status I get the 403 forbidden error.

Are these 403's typical for an editorial site where editors may be trying to access an article in draft status while they are not logged in? Webmaster tools is showing roughly 350 pages with the 'Access Denied' 403 status.

Are these harmful to rank?

Thanks!

Hey All,

Both MOZ & Webmaster tools have identified 403 errors on an editorial site I work with (using Drupal CMS). I looked into the errors and the pages triggering the 403 are all articles in draft status that are not being indexed. If I am not logged into our drupal and I try to access an article in draft status I get the 403 forbidden error.

Are these 403's typical for an editorial site where editors may be trying to access an article in draft status while they are not logged in? Webmaster tools is showing roughly 350 pages with the 'Access Denied' 403 status.

Are these harmful to rank?

Thanks!