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.
Subdomain 403 error
-
Hi Everyone,
A crawler from our SEO tool detects a 403 error from a link from our main domain to a a couple of subdomains. However, these subdomains are perfect accessibly. What could be the problem? Is this error caused by the server, the crawlbot or something else?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
Jens -
no at all
-
Hi Roman,
Thanks for your answer!
It's a commercial tool.
I checked the robots.txt file and .htaccess, but didn't saw any problems.
As you say, the problem can just be caused by the user-agent.If so, this will not affect my SEO efforts, right?
-
Which tool are you using is this a custom tool or commercial tool such as Screamingfrog?
-
These are all for client errors. That means the page wasn’t found and something is wrong with the request. Whatever is happening though, the issue is typically on the client side:
403: Forbidden, So In your case, the first place that you need to check is your .htaccess and your Robots.txt file and make sure that they are not blocking any crawler or at least the crawler of your tools.
For example, some Hosting providers block all the crawlers that are not Google or Bing to save resources. So is usual that Roger (Moz Crawler) has problems to crawl a page that is blocked on the server side. Usually, Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush has this kind of problem so in summary
- Make sure your .htaccess and your Robots.txt is not blocking your crawler
- Make sure your hosting is not blocking your crawler
- If all the above does not work try to modify the user-agent of your tool
Hope this info helps you with your problem
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
-
How to get rid of bot verification errors
I have a client who sells highly technical products and has lots and lots (a couple of hundred) pdf datasheets that can be downloaded from their website. But in order to download a datasheet, a user has to register on the site. Once they are registered, they can download whatever they want (I know this isn't a good idea but this wasn't set up by us and is historical). On doing a Moz crawl of the site, it came up with a couple of hundred 401 errors. When I investigated, they are all pages where there is a button to click through to get one of these downloads. The Moz error report calls the error "Bot verification". My questions are:
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti
Are these really errors?
If so, what can I do to fix them?
If not, can I just tell Moz to ignore them or will this cause bigger problems?0 -
Subdomain or subfolder?
Hello, We are working on a new site. The idea of the site is to have an ecommerce shop, but the homepage will be a content page, basically a blog page.
Technical SEO | | pinder325
My developer wants to have the blog (home) page on a subdomain, so blog.example.com, because it will be easier to make a nice content page this way, and the the rest of the site will just be on the root domain (example.com). I'm just worried that this will be bad for our SEO efforts. I've always thought it was better to use a sub folder rather than a subdomain. If we get links to the content on the subdomain, will the link juice flow to the shop, on the root domain? What are your thoughts?0 -
404 Error Pages being picked up as duplicate content
Hi, I recently noticed an increase in duplicate content, but all of the pages are 404 error pages. For instance, Moz site crawl says this page: https://www.allconnect.com/sc-internet/internet.html has 43 duplicates and all the duplicates are also 404 pages (https://www.allconnect.com/Coxstatic.html for instance is a duplicate of this page). Looking for insight on how to fix this issue, do I add an rel=canonical tag to these 60 error pages that points to the original error page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | kfallconnect0 -
?_escaped_fragment_= Duplicate error in Webmaster
Hi I am not sure where this came from ... ?escaped_fragment= But in webmaster we are seeing hundreds of pages with this and thus webmaster is saying that we have Pages with duplicate title tags How do I fix this, or remove it. Regards T
Technical SEO | | Taiger0 -
Is there any benefit in using a subdomain redirected to a single page?
For example if we have a domain www.bobshardware.com.au and we setup a subdomain sydneysupplies.bobshardware.com.au and then brisbanescrewdrivers.bobshardware.com.au and used those in ad campaigns. Each subdomain being redirected back to a single page such as bobshardware.com.au/brisbane-screw-drivers etc. Is there a benefit ? Cheers
Technical SEO | | techdesign0 -
Robots.txt on subdomains
Hi guys! I keep reading conflicting information on this and it's left me a little unsure. Am I right in thinking that a website with a subdomain of shop.sitetitle.com will share the same robots.txt file as the root domain?
Technical SEO | | Whittie0 -
403 forbidden error how to solve them
hi, i have been using a great tool today called screaming frog which was shown to me by Thomas Zickell when i used the tool i found some worrying things for my site www.in2town.co.uk. what i have found is, i have a large number of 403 forbidden status on my home page and i do not know why here is an example http://www.in2town.co.uk/emmerdale/emmerdale-debbie-hits-rock-bottom it loads fine but on the tool it shows it as an error and shows it as having no meta tags or anything but there is meta tags in there can anyone please let me know how to solve this and why it has happened many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Is there a way of changing the Permalink without getting the 404 Error?
Hi, I am new to this all.. Is there a way of changing the permalink for example from: domain/content/ to domain/profile/ without receiving the 404 error message. It's just that since my website has been developed, some pages and their content have changed but the permalink still shows the name of the old page which may be confusing. Ps. Please use most simple language for explanations as I am really new to it. Thank you! Ve
Technical SEO | | MissVe0
