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.
Difference between urls and referring urls?
-
Sorry, nit new to this side of SEO
We recently discovered we have over 200 critical crawler issues on our site (mainly 4xx)
We exported the CSV and it shows both a URL link and a referring URL. Both lead to a 'page not found' so I have two questions?
What is the difference between a URL and a referring URL?
What is the best practice/how do we fix this issue? Is it one for our web developer?
Appreciate the help.
-
No. The referring URL is a page on your site that has a broken link on it. These are damaging your rankings so so fix ASAP. Go to all the referring pages and fix or remove the links with the URL in.
-
I believe "URL" is the page on your website that is 404ing/Broken, the "Referring URL" is the website someone found your URL on and clicked through to. For example, if you had a broken link on a Facebook post you did, it would show the URL as "yourwebsite.com/examply" (broken link) and the Referring URL would be "facebook.com/yourprofile".
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 Site search operator showing different results than Search Console
Hey everybody, I am seeing some confusing results. I am seeing that in the back of our Search Console we are showing around 4,500 sites indexed. If I use the "site" operator in google, only 2820 show up... any thoughts as to why that happens?
Moz Pro | | HashtagHustler1 -
Why Do Different Tools Report 404s Differently?
Hi Mozers, How come Moz reports just six 404 errors, whereas Google Search Console reports 250 and Screaming Frog only reports a dozen? It seems to me that these results are all over the place. Shouldn't these reports be more consistent? I do understand that Search Console includes historical data and that URLs or issues need to be "marked as fixed" in order for them to go away, however, even if I do this, Google ends up reporting far more errors than anything else. Do 404s reported by Moz and Screaming Frog NOT include external links? It seems to me that this could be partially responsible for the issue. Also, is there a way to efficiently track the source of the 404s besides clicking on "Linked From" within Search Console 250 times? I was looking for something like this is Moz or SF but no luck. Any help is appreciated. Thanksabunch!
Moz Pro | | EricFish0 -
What is the best way to treat URLs ending in /?s=
Hi community, I'm going through the list of crawl errors visible in my MOZ dashboard and there's a few URLs ending in /?s= How should I treat these URLs? Redirects? Thanks for any help
Moz Pro | | Easigrass0 -
Canonical URLs all show trailing slash on main site pages - using Yoast SEO for Wordpress - how to correct
We are using Yoast for a number of our sites. We use naked domain as the canonical. I have noticed in the header tags that all our sites show the canonical URLs as having a trailing slash: Example: http;//foxspizzajc.com, when I look at the source code, it shows the canonical as http;//foxspizzajc.com/ Of course, it is much more likely that all sites that link to us will not use the trailing slash - so preferably we do not want that to be the canonical - among other reasons. Does this need to be fixed so the trailing slash is removed? I cannot see how to do this in Yoast SEO or in Permalinks structure for Wordpress. Sorry for my ignorance. Thanks for any help.
Moz Pro | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing1 -
Why is MOZ and Google search Volume so different?
A search term in MOZ shows the monthly search volume to be 49K. In Google, the same term shows the search volume at only 1300 monthly searches. Which do I trust? Thanks, Don
Moz Pro | | rcman0 -
What Is he Difference Between Google UK and Google Great Britain
When setting up a campaign for keywords and selected search engines. I am targeting a UK market so obviously Google.co.uk is my main target. However when I set up the campaign i select Google as the SE but it asks me if I want United Kingdom or Great Britain. I selected United Kingdom and it has been returning 0 results for rankings even though I can physically see them in the SERPS. Does anyone know exactly what is the difference between the UK and GB options. I assume I should of specified GB but not sure. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Moz Pro | | hanv0 -
Duplicate page titles are the same URL listed twice
The system says I have two duplicate page titles. The page titles are exactly the same because the two URLs are exactly the same. These same two identical URLs show up in the Duplicate Page Content also - because they are the same. We also have a blog and there are two tag pags showing identical content - I have blocked the blog in robots.txt now, because the blog is only for writers. I suppose I could have just blocked the tags pages.
Moz Pro | | loopyal0 -
Discrepancies in PA and LRDs reported in different SEOmoz tools
I've noticed a difference in the reported PA and LRD numbers for URLs depending on whether you use Open Site Explorer, or look at the same metrics from within the rankings history (in your campaign set up). I've checked this for a few URLs and what I'm seeing is the reported scores for PA and LRDs is different 9 times out of ten. The PA is sometiomes higher on one report, lower on another, or vice versa. Same for LRDs. I thought it might be because one report was lagging behind and using old data, but that would only make sense if I was seeing an increase in reported LRDs, but it just as often shows a decrease ! Is this just a bug in the campaign>rankings history report or is there a reason for the discrepancies?
Moz Pro | | Websensejim0