The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • My Q&A
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. SEO and Digital Marketing Q&A Forum
    2. Categories
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. All urls seem to exist (no 404 errors) but they don't.

    All urls seem to exist (no 404 errors) but they don't.

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2 2 67
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • DoMiSoL
      DoMiSoL last edited by

      Hello I am doing a SEO auditing for a website which only has a few pages. I have no cPanel credentials, no FTP no Wordpress admin account, just watching it from the outside.

      The site works, the Moz crawler didn't report any problem, I can reach every  page from the menu.

      The problem is that - except for the few actual pages - no matter what you type after the domain name, you always reach the home page and don't get any 404 error.

      I.E.

      Http://domain.com/oiuxyxyzbpoyob/ (there is no such a page, but i don't get 404 error, the home is displayed and the  url in the browser remains Http://domain.com/oiubpoyob/, so it's not a 301 redirect).

      Http://domain.com/WhatEverYouType/ (same)

      1. Could this be an important SEO issue (i.e. resulting in infinite amount of duplicate content pages )?
      2. Do you think I should require the owner to prevent this from happening?
      3. Should I look into the .htaccess file to fix it ?

      Thank you Mozers!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • royalcaninnl
        royalcaninnl last edited by

        Hi,

        This is indeed an SEO issue, because you could possibly get an infinite ammount of duplicate content pages of your homepage. I do not think it is a major issue (i think that Google in Webmaster tool handles it as a soft 404). But from a user standpoint it is weird and not really use friendly.

        It could be managed in the HTACCES but could also be a Wordpress setup. So it depends.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • 1 / 1
        • First post
          Last post
        • Can't diagnose this 404 error
          kevinliao
          kevinliao
          0
          4
          93

        • Sites still rank who don't seem like they should. Why?
          MattRoney
          MattRoney
          0
          3
          93

        • Pagination and View All Pages Question. We currently don't have a canonical tag pointing to View all as I don't believe it's a good user experience so how best we deal with this.
          PeteC12
          PeteC12
          0
          3
          117

        • Incoming links which don't exists...
          Dr-Pete
          Dr-Pete
          1
          3
          103

        • How does the crawl find duplicate pages that don't exist on the site?
          Deniz
          Deniz
          0
          3
          110

        • Google suddenly indexing and displaying URLs that haven't existed for years?
          jamestown
          jamestown
          0
          3
          250

        • Have you ever seen this 404 error: 'www.mysite.com/Cached' in GWT?
          raulo79
          raulo79
          0
          2
          618

        • Don't want to lose page rank, what's the best way to restructure a url other than a 301 redirect?
          marig
          marig
          0
          6
          1.0k

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        • Digital Marketers
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • Local Citation Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter
        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2026 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy