Google see 302 but it is 200 OK - OsCommerce

[Vivamedia]

Hi!

I´ve a problem with a webshop that run OsCOmmerce. Google report thousands of urls "Not followed" in Webmaster Tools, and it´s increasing for every day.

When you fetch as Google you get a 302 to ../cookie_usage.php. But if you fetch the page in your browser you get 200 OK.

Why does Google get 302 but users 200? We´ve checked for malware and restored old backups, nothing helps.

Thoughts about this?

[Peekabo]

Well, my best guess without having the site is based on the name of the file  /cookie_usage.php . I assume you check for cookie support, and since googlebot doesn't have that they get redirected to the page saying you need cookies

[Vivamedia]

Hi!

Got a solution for this issue,

It's gzip compression that makes the 302 redirection! Enabling compression causes the redirects Google boot to cookies_usage.php and therefore Google believe they visit cookies_usage.php while they came thru another URL. Disabling it fixes the problem.

Need to investigate the gzip-plugin for OsCommerce and see what I find.

Thanks for your help!