Any idea why this is reporting a 404 in MozTools?

[NoahsDad]

I did away with a vague category and 301 redirected the category url to the home page. However the link is reporting as a 404 in Moz Tools when it scans my site. Here's the link, and as you can see it redirects to the home page. Just curious if I did something wrong. Thanks.

[RyanKent]

Are you certain you crawled the site after the redirect was in place?

If so, can you share the full record?

By the way, while looking at this is issue I noticed your site does not handle https protocol well. Try using it on your home page and see what happens. If your site does not use https, I would suggest redirecting all https requests to their http equivalent.

[NoahsDad]

Yelp, the crawl just happened today.

Also you'll have to excuse my ignorance but I'm not sure what you mean by the last half of your comment. "my site does not handle https protocol well?"

Can you explain that to me. (I'm still learning.)

Thanks for taking the time to help by the way.

[RyanKent]

Try going to the following address: https://noahsdad.com

[NoahsDad]

Yah, but my site is http://noahsdad.com/ - should I expect https to also work?

[RyanKent]

Perhaps I am being too picky, especially for a non-business site.

I would share that even though your site is noahsdad.com, you took the effort to redirect www.noahsdad.com to noahsdad.com, right? Why did you take that extra step?

Whatever the response, the same concept would apply to the redirect from https protocol to http. The issue may never come up, but then again it only requires minimal effort to close this gap.

[NoahsDad]

Ryan,

Thanks for your feedback. Wordpress automatically redirects to the non http version.

Regarding https sites I dont know many personal sites that pay for a https cert (or even why there would be a need.) Also I don't link to anything with https. It doesn't seem really seem necessary (unless I"m missing something.)

Heck, I just tried to go to https://seomoz.com and their site doesn't even go there.

[RyanKent]

I am going to let this issue drop since it is such a small item for a personal site. A few last thoughts:

**Wordpress automatically redirects to the non http version. **

No, it does not. On the SEOmoz site, you are seeing the proper redirect. For example, if you take this Q&A post and prefix it with https:// you will wind up on this exact Q&A post in the http:// protocol. If you look at the Mozbar, you will see the redirect.

On your site, you are taken to another page from your hosting company.

**I dont know many personal sites that pay for a https cert **

There is no need for you to purchase a SSL certificate. That is not what I was suggesting.

I apologize for bringing this trivial matter up. Please disregard.

[NoahsDad]

No worries.

My real question is still why the redirect is showing up as a 404 when the site is crawled. I'd still be interested in figuring that out if you have any thoughts.

Thanks.

[RyanKent]

I would need to see the full record from the crawl report in order to respond. Perhaps you can upload the record to a web server and share the link?

[Saijo.George]

It could be that MozTools is looking at a cached version . You could try fetching it in Google Webmasters Tool to see how Google sees it  ( which is what you should really worry about )

But as far as I can see you have 301 in place for that category to your home page : www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php?submit=submit&url=http://noahsdad.com/mom-md

[ShaMenz]

Hi Rick,

While I know that Ryan decided to drop the https:// protocol problem, I just wanted to explain why it could be an issue for you.

It may not be a concern  for a lot of personal sites, but for those where the site may be serving a strongly recognized brand it definitely should be a concern. That recognition could be coming both from your online visibility and/or from your involvement in offline communities or activities. Basically, if you have a reputation or following, people who know of your site will be much more likely to type your URL straight into a browser to go there.

I, for example, have come to know and love noahsdad.com through your involvement here in SEOmoz Q&A. I've visited the site, love your work and from time to time it crosses my mind to drop in and see what Noah has been up to lately. Since I know the site's domain, when that happens, I click inside the field at the top of my browser and replace everything after the www of the site that is open with noahsdad.com.

Now, in the event that the page I had open in my browser when I did that happened to be using the https:// protocol and I didn't realize that (which often happens), I would actually be asking my browser to go to https://www.noahsdad.com...and I think now you see why this could be an issue for you.

Hope that helps

Sha

Thumbs up for the catch too Ryan!

[JustinTaylor88]

Totally agree with Ryan, you should redirect https to http

Trivial maybe, but can see no reason not to do it as it takes no effort and makes your site even more accessible to users who mis-type, key your address directly into the url bar while on a https site etc

*This was in response to Ryans post which started "Perhaps i am being too picky..." I accidentally clicked the wrong reply button!!