Seeing a TON of 404 errors

#143585
  • Resolved Joseph

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    HI,

    I’m relatively new to building sites and I am wondering about a series of 404 errors your 404 monitor is picking up. The site was launched a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I continue to get more and more errors logged. None of them are for actual pages. They seem to be files that don’t exist on my site like random .php files.

    I don’t believe I have seen the same error twice. It almost looks like it’s going down a checklist and looking for every file type a site could have. Here is an image of what I am seeing https://ibb.co/VqrPMP5.

    Is this normal for a new site that didn’t exist before? Should I be worried about these errors or will they eventually stop?

    Thank you in advance for your help.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Reinelle

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.

    Please note that we only report the 404s. We do not have information on how or why they are generated. You can get further insight into them by enabling the advanced monitor at WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > General Settings > 404 Monitor:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/monitor-404-errors/#advanced-404-monitor

    That will give you more information like referrer and user-agent. You can use that information to track down the source or find out if it is just bots generating those errors.

    You can also fix these errors by redirecting them to a related page on your website:
    https://rankmath.com/kb/fix-404-errors/

    Or, you can add them to the exclusion list at WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > General Settings > 404 Monitor > Exclude Paths

    I hope that helps. Thank you, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need further assistance.

    Joseph

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Rank Math free

    Thank you for the quick response.

    I am currently using the advanced monitoring dashboard. If you look at the image attached to the original ticket, you will see that all of these errors are for files and they are all internal. I don’t even know where to start when it comes to fixing these.

    Can anyone tell me if this looks like bots or if this looks normal for a brand new site?

    Are these considered soft or hard 404s and do they impact my site?

    Reinelle

    4 years, 1 month ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for the follow-up.

    Unfortunately, we cannot tell how or why they are generated. If you are seeing random 404s that you know for a fact are incorrect, this seems to be likely generated by a bot and can be safely ignored. You could also use a service like Cloudflare to block out access to bots so they do not use up your server resources.

    Here’s a great article on how to secure your WordPress website:
    https://mythemeshop.com/blog/wordpress-security-tips/

    I hope that helps. Thank you, and please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime if you need further assistance.

    RankBot

    4 years ago

    Hello,

    Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.

    If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.

    Thank you.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The ticket ‘Seeing a TON of 404 errors’ is closed to new replies.