4XX Errors - Adding %5c%5c to Links
-
Hi all
Hope someone can help me with this.
The internal links on my hubby's business site occasionally break and add %5c%5c%5c endlessly to the end of the url - like this:
site.com/about/hours-of-operation/\\\\\\\\%
I cannot for the life of me figure out why it is doing this and while it has happened to me from time to time, I can't recreate it.
My crawl diagnostics here in my SEOMox campaign show 19-20 urls doing this - it's nuts.
Any insight?
Thank you!!
Jennifer
~PotPieGirl
-
Both Shane and I looked and neither of saw any / vs \ issues.
Then, I just took a peek at my source code and look what I saw:
http://screencast.com/t/y02R4RS2L
Think that is it?
Thanks for replying!
Jennifer
-
Sent you a PM, Shane - thanks so much for the offer!
By "occasionally break", I mean that every now and again, any link on the site will freak out and add the %5c jibberish to the end.
Jennifer
-
It would really have to be....
The only reason for a %5C is the use of backslash - as that is actually what it means in code.
**business site occasionally break **
How do you mean "break" ?
My crawl diagnostics here in my SEOMox campaign show 19-20 urls doing this - it's nuts.
Is the only issue from this in SEOMOZ reports?
If you would like to PM me the site I can attempt to profile it
-
Thanks for replying so quickly, Shane!
I don't believe it's a / vs \ issue. It's a wordpress site. Key pages are in the top nav bar (all urls correct) and all the side bar links are 'widgets' and created by Wordpress.
For some reason I am suspecting a theme issue, but if I can't recreate the error, I'll have no way of knowing if changing the theme solves the problem.
Site has been online since 2010 with no issues...this is a new issue (past couple months according to crawl diagnostics).
Thanks!!!
-
somewhere in your url coding you added backslash instead of slash which is not valid.
-
It appears from research it is actually \ (backslash) not / (slash)
So possibly somewhere in your site you have used \ instead of / but of course this is just a possibility, as it appears that %5C is the delimiter or interpretation of \ in original Unix.
Hope this helps
PS a quick check at http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp verified %5c is URL encode, for backslash - as it is treated as a special character, so somewhere in your CMS or code, you have used backslash instead of slash.
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
-
Sitemap error in Webmaster tools - 409 error (conflict)
Hey guys, I'm getting this weird error when I submit my sitemap to Google. It says I'm getting a 409 error in my post-sitemap.xml file (https://cleargear.com/post-sitemap.xml). But when I check it, it looks totally fine. I am using YoastSEO to generate the sitemap.xml file. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a big deal? If so, Does anyone know how to fix? Thanks EwTswL4
Technical SEO | | Extima-Christian0 -
403 error
Hey guys, I know that a 403 is not a terrible thing, but is it worth while fixing? If so what is the best way to approach it. Cheers
Technical SEO | | Adamshowbiz0 -
My seo company has a footer link that links to my site by keyword will this effect my rankings
My old SEo company has a footer link by keyword to my site so it acts like a site wide link will this effect my rankings. My site was in the top 5 for many keywords now page 2 and 3 so I am trying to see what has effected it as we havent changed what we do
Technical SEO | | Casefun0 -
Added data to links
Hello I am in the process of cleaning a site and getting less pages cached. it is a magento site and I was wondering what is your advice fo pages that get this padded to the link ?material=139&price=10%2C12 accept the obvious canonical? thanks
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy0 -
SEOMoz Crawling Errors
I recently implemented a blog using WordPress on our website. I didn't use WordPress as the CMS for the rest of our site just the blog portion. So as an example I installed Wordpress in http://www.mysite/blog/" not in the root. My error report in SEOMoz went from 0 to 22e. The Moz bot or crawler that SEOMoz uses is reporting a ton of 4xx errors to strang links that shouldn't exist anywhere on the site. Example: Good link - http://www.mysite/products.html Bad link reported by SEOMoz - http://www.mysite/blog/my-first-post/products.html I've also noticed that my page speed as become much slower as reported by Google. Does anybody know what could be happening here? I know that typically it's better to install WordPress in the root and use it to control the entire site but I was under the gun to get a blog out. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TRICORSystems0 -
Unknown "/" added causing 404 error
I have four 404 url redirect errors that I cannot sort out. It tells me the referring url: | www.homedestination.com/calculator-mortgage-resources.html has a "/" on the end. cannot find: | www.homedestination.com/calculator-mortgage-resources.html | I cannot figure out where this referring url is; as it is in the root file without a "/" on the end. Could it be on a page somewhere? All my Dreamweaver page link tests come back ok. I must be missing something simple and would value help for others who may spot it? Thanks! |
Technical SEO | | jessential0 -
Google Webmaster tools error?
So I am trying to set the URL preference in google webmaster tools for my site. However when I try to save it it tells me to verify that I own the site. I have already done this so where can I go to verify I own the site exactly? Maybe I am wrong and I have not done this already but even on the homepage of webmaster tools I don't see an option to "verify".
Technical SEO | | ENSO0 -
Too many external links?
Ok, so I am finally focusing more on SEO of my hobby website as I am notice the relavent keywords are not really onsite what I want, for example, according to analytics "post" is my most popular keyword which I assume is from the vbulletin forum. My question today is that according to the moz scan, my forum has too many external links, my question is what are some measures I can do whether within the vbulletin forum or custom coding to reduce the amount of links/increase power? www.rcnightmare.com
Technical SEO | | TheTippingPoint0