I added a privacy policy link to my footer and now Moz is showing thousands of 4xx errors

[elisa17591]

My website didn't have a privacy policy so I added one and put the link in the footer menu. When I did this, Moz came back telling me that there are a lot of new errors on the site. Is this a bad thing? Do I need to address it?

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[Natalie-Alexis]

Hi there!

Sorry for the confusion!

So it looks like the issue here is that you have entered in a relative link into your footer instead of an absolute link.

[utahattorneys.com/privacy-policy](</span><a href=)">Privacy Policy

vs

[https://www.utahattorneys.com/privacy-policy/](</span><a href=)">Privacy Policy

If you make the change as shown above, you should be all set! If you have any further questions or concerns, please send up a message to help@moz.com!

[elisa17591]

I fixed it per your suggestion and and re-crawled the site, which fixed the issues.

As an SEO newbie, can you please explain why the relative URL would cause those issues but not the absolute URL?

Thanks again! I really appreciate it

[sean-parnell]

Because putting https://www.utahattorneys.com/privacy-policy/ or just "/privacy-policy" tells the browser where the location of the Privacy Policy is. Otherwise, the browser will think the Privacy Policy page is located in the same folder as the page you're on.