Moz Scan Adding Random Sub-Domains to URL For Non-Existant Pages

[Webnames]

Hi,

Our company recently launched a redesign of our site. On our latest Moz scan, it is reporting that it has crawled over 12,000+ pages. We have less than 900 pages on our site.

While looking at the error messages, it seems that Moz is adding random sub folders to the folder /about/press_releases/ to create non-existent pages which either 404 or 302 redirect to an error page.

So, it's taking virtually every sub-folder combination and adding it to /about/press_releases/ to create a ridiculous amount of errors that really don't even exist. Ran the site through Screaming Frog and it was not an issue and did not have a similar effect.

What's the solution?

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Dave,

I assume you are talking about webnames.ca, in which case if you drop the url for the press_releases into screaming frog then you see a whole bunch of 302's to an error page. I had a quick look and could not see an obvious link that was spawning these but something must be in there if both tools are seeing it. Most obvious thing would probably be a relative link (so like href="/default.aspx") maybe in one of the press releases themselves since your main menu items at first glance look ok.

If you export the errors list from moz and filter for the 302s, then the referring page shown in the far right column in combination with the error page shown in the first column might help track down the place where the whole thing starts off. Tracking down the link(s) causing these kind of issues can be a real pain sometimes!

Hope that helps!