Hello,
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been experiencing strange reports on the 404 Monitor. It’s understandable that this can be confusing and concerning.
It’s important to note that the 404 Monitor in advanced mode captures a lot more details about your 404 errors, including additional information such as the referring URL of the 404 error URL. This can lead to a higher number of errors being displayed in the 404 Monitor.
Regarding the extensions such as txt, js, json, css, env, and others being reported, it’s possible that these are legitimate 404 errors caused by missing or removed files on your website. However, if you believe that these extensions are not relevant or should not be reported, you can exclude them from being monitored.
To exclude specific file extensions from being reported in the 404 Monitor, you can use the “Exclude Paths” feature in Rank Math. Here’s how you can do it:
- Navigate to your WordPress dashboard and go to Rank Math SEO → General Settings → 404 Monitor.
- In the “Exclude Paths” section, add the file extensions that you want to exclude from being monitored. For example, if you want to exclude .txt, .js, .json, .css, and .env files, you can add them here.
By excluding these file extensions, you can ensure that they are not reported in the 404 Monitor.
If you have any further questions or need assistance with this, please feel free to reply to this ticket, and our support team will be more than happy to help.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and we appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this issue for you.
Sources:
How to Monitor 404 Errors with Rank Math SEO Plugin
Rank Math’s 404 Monitor in Advanced vs. Simple Mode » Rank Math
How to Find Out Where 404 Errors Are Coming From » Rank Math
Rank Math General Settings
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math support, and we regret the inconvenience caused.
If you are seeing other random 404s that you are sure are incorrect, it is likely that they are generated by spammers and bots. You can safely ignore them, as they don’t affect your site’s performance or ranking.
However, please note that we only report the 404s. We do not have information on how or why they are generated. You can try to fix these errors by following this guide: https://rankmath.com/kb/fix-404-errors/
To block out access to bots, you can use a service like Cloudflare (https://www.cloudflare.com/). Cloudflare is a web security and performance service that can protect your site from malicious bots and attacks.
Please you can refer to this guide to learn more about the advanced 404 monitors: https://rankmath.com/kb/monitor-404-errors/#how-to-use-404-monitor-information
We hope this helps and please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
Thank you.
I often used the Clear Log option to clear the entire log, instead of selecting all the URLs and deleting them in bulk. This seems like a bad solution, what do I do to fix it?
I found a strange report from Ahrefs: it lists a url that I never created. It looks like a search done by a spammer and created a backlink.
I hope to never see strange formats on your instrument again. I had the Cloudflare firewall disabled on the Total Cache plugin, because I had Wordfence until a month ago.
Hello,
The 404 Monitor log only shows the URL that people are accessing and getting 404 errors. In your case, that log suggests that people are trying to access those unwanted URLs and as there isn’t any page with that name, they are getting 404 (Not Found) error.
That normally suggests that your site is open to malware and bots are accessing unwanted pages and theme/plugins files of your site.
You can check a malware test of your site using this tool here: https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/
Also, we suggest following some security settings. You can read more about it here: https://kinsta.com/blog/scan-wordpress-for-malware/
You can fix these errors by redirecting them to a related page on your website or you can exclude the URLs from WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > General Settings > 404 Monitor: https://rankmath.com/kb/general-settings/#exclude-paths
Hope that helps and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.
Thank you.
Using Wp-staging, I noticed the problem better. The problem is still not completely clear to me, but I notice that when I disable the plugins on the staging site, and by going to the 2 players category, I receive code 404. The problem does not occur with Rank Math enabled and all the other plugins disabled.
I did a further check to see possible conflicts: yes, with Wordfence.
I haven’t done extensive testing, but there may be other conflicts.
Hello,
You can safely ignore them, as they don’t affect your site’s performance or ranking.
You can consider using Cloudflare to block out access to malicious bots and attacks. Optionally, you can also set the redirection fallback behavior to Redirect to Homepage from Rank Math > General Settings > Redirections > Fallback Behavior .
We hope this helps and please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
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.
