Strange problem with basic html anchor tag linking to my domain

[Maayboli]

I have some old valuable followed links from high ranking domains and I noticed from moz reports they are reporting 404.Visually they looked fne but when I clicked on those they indeed were generating 404.

When I researched further they are defined as

My domain.com   Notice there is extra space between "/" and the closing quote.  It turns out it is sending "www.mydomain.com/ " to browsers.

Any ideas How to solve this? If I should put a perm redirect in apache, how do I deal with these "%C2%A0" characters. It seems the issue is happening at more than one remote domain.

[DennisSeymour]

You can ask them to change it or just find a way to redirect http://www.mydomain.com/  back to the correct page. Whichever is easier.

That's pretty much the only options I'd have if I were in the situation.

[TimHolmes]

I have found this .htaccess solution on Shortstack - it may solve the issue, but you will have to check as I have as yet not had the chance.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^\xC2\xA0/?$ / [L,R=301]

Or if you have to use mod_alias:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/\xC2\xA0/?$ /

Let me know if it works.

Tim

[Maayboli]

Many thanks, Timbronz The solution you suggested worked perfectly. The "\x" is a particularly very different insight as just escaping "%" with "" does not work.

Dennis Seymor,

it is finding that way to redirect was the toughest problem as just escaping does not work and this has stumped many.