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.
Intermittent 404 - What causes them and how to fix?
-
Hi!
I'm working on a client site at the moment and I've discovered a couple of pages that are 404ing but producing a 200 OK response.
However, I have checked these URLs again and some are now producing a 404 Error response. No changes have been made (that I'm aware of) so it appears that the URLs are returning both 200 OK and 404 Error responses intermittently.
Any ideas what could cause this and the best solution?
Thanks!
-
Hi Daniel,
That does seem very odd!
There can be various different things at play here in my experience:
- Publishing and un-publishing in the CMS - Sometimes clients and CMS users will switch the page publish status around which can make it difficult to keep track of whether the page exists or not
- Removal of redirects - Much the same as above, there's the possibility that someone is adding/removing redirects. This could also be something to do with the removal of the server level redirects file, be that htaccess or IIS.
- Crawling tool issue - If you're using a crawling tool (especially if doing so with JS rendering active), sometimes this can put a lot of pressure on the server and it can spit out the occasional error where there actually isn't one
It could also be a problem with how you're handing hard 404 errors vs soft 404s - i.e. actual not founds vs pages that don't function but the server is under the impression that they're fine.
Best of luck!
Sean
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
-
Does using a canonical with ?utm_source=gmb cause any issues?
All of our URLs in Google My Business are tagged with ?utm_source=gmb. This way when people click on it within a Google Map listing, knowledge graph, etc we know it came from there. I'm assuming using a canonical on all ?_utm_source _pages (we have others, including some in the index) won't cause any problems with this, correct? Since they're not technically traditional organic SERPs? Dumb question I know, but better safe than sorry. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Alces1 -
Cookies disabled pointing to a 404 page
Hi mozzers, I am running an audit and disabled cookies on our homepage for testing purposes, this pointed to a 404 http response? I tried on other pages and they were loading correctly. I assume this is not normal? Why this is happening? and could this harm the site's SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Taysir0 -
Find all external 404 errors/links?
Hi All, We have recently discovered a site was linking to our site but it was linking to an incorrect url, resulting in a 404 error. We had only found this by pure chance and wondered if there was a tool out there that will tell us when a site is linking to an incorrect url on our site? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
"5XX (Server Error)" - How can I fix this?
Hey Mozers! Moz Crawl tells me I am having an issue with my Wordpress category - it is returning a 5XX error and i'm not sure why? Can anyone help me determine the issue? Crawl Issues and Notices for: http://www.refusedcarfinance.com/news/category/news We found 1 crawler issue(s) for this page. High Priority Issues 1 5XX (Server Error) 5XX errors (e.g., a 503 Service Unavailable error) are shown when a valid request was made by the client, but the server failed to complete the request. This can indicate a problem with the server, and should be investigated and fixed.
Technical SEO | | RocketStats0 -
How to inform Google to remove 404 Pages of my website?
Hi, I want to remove more than 6,000 pages of my website because of bad keywords, I am going to drop all these pages and making them ‘404’ I want to know how can I inform google that these pages does not exists so please don’t send me traffic from those bad keywords? Also want to know can I use disavow tool of google website to exclude these 6,000 pages of my own website?
Technical SEO | | renukishor4 -
Backlinks that we have if they are 404?
Hi All, Backlinks that we have if they are 404? Open site explorer shows 1,000 of links and when I check many are 404 and those are spammy links which we had but now the sites are 404 I am doing a link profile check which is cleaning up all spammy links Should i take any action on them? As open site explorer or Google still shows these links on the searches. Should we mention these URL's in disallow in Google webmaster. Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Too Many On-Page Links - caused by a drop down menu
Many of our e-com sites we build for customers have drop down menus to help the user easily find products without having to click - Example: http://www.customandcommercial.com/ But this then causes the report to trigger too many on page links We do have a site map and a google site map So should I put code in place not to follow the drop down menu link items or leave in place?
Technical SEO | | spiralsites0 -
How to find and fix 404 and broken links?
Hi, My campaign is showing me many 404 problems and other tools are also showing me broken links, but the links they show me dose work and I cant seem to find the broken links or the cause of the 404. Can you help?
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0