View Full Version : GWT - Google Redirect Error -"Not Followed" error messages
craigmn3
12-20-2011, 11:11 AM
I am suddenly getting a whole raft of "not followed" links in my Google Webmaster Tools
152 links in the last three days telling me I have a redirect error? But the links are all good?
Anyone have an idea what's going on here I am clueless
dgswilson
12-20-2011, 04:12 PM
"not followed"
You mean not allowed? robots.txt, parameters, web-index settings, folder/file permissions, meta robots tag
Can't think of anything else at the moment but google etal will follow anything it's allowed to
Oh, maybe redirect not given [L]
deepsand
12-20-2011, 11:06 PM
Per Webmaster Tools Help: Help articles › Using Webmaster Tools › Diagnostics › URLs not followed errors (http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35156), it would appear that GWMT is supposed to give a specific reason.
Tiggerito
12-21-2011, 04:29 AM
You mean not allowed? robots.txt, parameters, web-index settings, folder/file permissions, meta robots tag
Can't think of anything else at the moment but google etal will follow anything it's allowed to
Oh, maybe redirect not given [L]
The robots.txt stuff comes under the "Restricted by robots.txt" section. "not followed" is different.
As @deepsands reference shows, "not followed" relates to redirect or cookie issues. The not allowed errors ("Restricted by robots.txt") cover the robots.txt blocking and I also believe noindex robots meta tags get a page placed here as well.
craigmn3
12-21-2011, 11:44 AM
These redirect errors are still mounting and they are all still active. I checked robots text file and nothing has changed there.
I think the problem is with my hoster, and I am in the process of changing it right now.
would this error occur if the site became unavailable during spidering?
below is a graphic of the the first part of now 184 redirect errors
This is what GWT says about them
Specific redirect errors you may see listed are:
Redirect error Google was unable to completely follow the redirects from this page. Our guidelines suggest that you make every page on your site reachable from at least one static text link, so that we can access these pages easily. Below are some suggestions about using redirects:
•Minimize the number of redirects needed to follow a link from one page to another.
•Make sure your redirect timer is set for a relatively short period of time.
•Avoid using meta refreshes in the <head> statement of your pages.
I do not have any "redirects" for any of these pages???
Additional information....I am also getting redirect errors in the site map portion of crawl errors?
All of these brand new that I did not change, and good pages
deepsand
12-21-2011, 07:45 PM
Why is that so many assume that their host is the source of their problems, when there are a plethora of other possibilities?
As the only details at hand are those contained in the provided image, all that can be said at the moment is that the URLs listed there are incomplete; they are lacking a Domain Name.
dgswilson
12-21-2011, 08:30 PM
You might go to
http://user-agent-string.info/ grab some different agents and send them down those links. See what you get, 301, 302, 2x4 etc
deepsand
12-21-2011, 09:08 PM
Suggest using Rex Swain's HTTP Header Viewer (http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html) with Googlebot/2.1 as the User_Agent.
Tiggerito
12-21-2011, 09:59 PM
Which CMS are you using?
I've seen CMSs that create URLs like that (cPath=), and have caused issues with spidering.
Sometimes they have a cookieless mode that starts adding session data to the URLs. As bots don't use cookies things can go a little crazy for them.
Following on from @dgswilson suggestion. Also try making the requests with cookies disabled and see what happens.
The checker in my signature may be of help.
craigmn3
12-22-2011, 09:01 AM
Why is that so many assume that their host is the source of their problems, when there are a plethora of other possibilities?
As the only details at hand are those contained in the provided image, all that can be said at the moment is that the URLs listed there are incomplete; they are lacking a Domain Name.
In this case, I finally was able to confirm with Go Daddy that they were having "server issues" and they were trying to rebuild the back end. It got so bad even my sitemaps dissappeared. They also admitted to being the cause of all these unredirected redirects
Go Daddy finally admitted to this when I called them (the third time) and requested access logs, fearing that I was hacked, as happened before.
It may not be the hoster on on every occassion, but it is not something you can outrightly dismiss either.
I have been dragging my feet changing hosts, because of multiple data bases and sheer size, but I am not dragging my feet anymore. Back to a nice, uncrowded, more expensiive dedicated system for me.
JLP2073
01-02-2012, 09:55 PM
I have got the same issue on a website hosted at Godaddy's as well (see here (http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/threads/114357-Google-webmaster-tools-found-1000s-of-404-page-not-found)). What did you tell them ? What did they do ? That said I have got it also with 2 similar websites on 2 other different hosts.
craigmn3
01-06-2012, 06:57 PM
I have got the same issue on a website hosted at Godaddy's as well (see here (http://www.webproworld.com/webmaster-forum/threads/114357-Google-webmaster-tools-found-1000s-of-404-page-not-found)). What did you tell them ? What did they do ? That said I have got it also with 2 similar websites on 2 other different hosts.
I told them bye bye. I changed hosters... downloaded 1.5 gb of website and relative data bases and uploaded it on a new server, and those errors immediately stopped. When I called them they admitted they were having "problems" but wouldn't have informed me if I didn't ask.
I should have moved out of there a long time ago, but the move was drastic and so I kept putting bandaids on it.
There is a whole lot of hacking going on out there right now....and if you have a hoster who is non informative, it really can suck