Errors in urls detected by google

[EnergyFreak +]

What version of 68 Classifieds are you running?
V4.2.2.

What template are you using?

Custom

Please describe in detail the issue you are having:

Google seems to be detecting thousands of 404 errors (not found). I think it may have something to do with the SEO Mod.

The url that google is finding as a 404 error is not the appropriate url:

ex:

http://www.publito.com/3/posts/5-Emplois/44-Technologies/

The working and correct url is this:

http://www.publito.com/categories/technologies.html

It seems to be adding the main category and a number in front of that category. All the urls are working fine on my website, but I don't understand where google is grabbing those urls from. All the 404 errors that google is detecting has numbers in the url like in my example above. Sorry if I am not clear, if there are any questions regarding the issue, ask away.

Thanks.

[seymourjames +]

You have hundreds of adverts indexed but you have rewritten the url of each without doing a 301 redirect on them. Instead it is seeing a 404. Same with categories etc. You are rewriting and not redirecting via your .htaccess. I am guessing that you have in fact done this twice as well. Rewritten, got the new urls indexed and then rewritten them again. The first set of rewrites are not being redirected. Also it is important to redirect the php based versions using a 301 redirect because otherwise Google is going to see two versions of the same listing. Eventually the 404s will fall out of the index so I would not worry too much.

[EnergyFreak +]

Thanks for clarifying. How would I do a 301 redirect for the php based urls using my .htaccess?

[seymourjames +]

Without knowing the specific details of what you have done it is impossible to answer that. Look up 301 redirect on google. It may be a case of doing some of the redirects for certain urls in the htaccess file and some by modifying the header of viewlisting.php . None of this is straightforward and unless you really know what you are doing, you can make a big mess. If you are getting 404s just leave them alone and let them disappear naturally over time. It may take months but they will go eventually. The thing to really focus on is 301 redirecting index.php , viewlisting.php and category.php because these are duplicate content. Just to be clear, redirect is not the same as rewrite. Again this is only really worth the pain if you those php urls are not only indexed but have links pointing at them from other sites. Otherwise google normally works it out that they are being rewritten. Use a header checker to see what you get for those php based urls.

[EnergyFreak +]

Thanks for the help, I will look into it.

[seymourjames +]

I think you are worrying too much. As long as there are 301 directs on urls that are duplications that is all you really need to worry about.