Hi Peter,

This is interesting, may I ask if those are the complete URLs? I ask because URL requests should only work if they begin with a domain or subdomain, for example:

http://example.com/ loads the homepage

http://subdomain.example.com/ loads the subdomain’s homepage

http://anything/example.com/ is invalid and won’t request anything from example.com (because of the invalid forward slash)

So I’m guessing that either there is more to the URLs reported in Google webmaster tools, or else it is an issue with existing redirects, either thru .htaccess or WordPress. The only way these requests would appear at your site is if they were included in the query string rather than the main part of the request.

So to continue the investigation, will you double-check webmaster tools for the complete URL requests.. perhaps more info is available there, and if not, the access logs for your server will reveal more information to help figure this out.

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for your quick review and response of my question.

I followed your suggestion to double-check the webmaster tools for the complete URL request and this provided me two pieces of very useful information:

1. The full link is: http://www.example.com/page/www.example.com

2. I was able to identify one of the pages that was causing the issue by clicking on the tab titled “linked from”.

From there I was able to find a footer link that was incorrectly constructed as per the example above. Since it is a footer link it is on every page. This solved the second issue I reported above.

I then looked at the first issue and here is an example of the full real URL from webmaster tools:

http://www.colormecontacts.com/out/www.colormecontacts.com/splash.htm

I found a link that is incorrectly point to an old html page, i.e. www.colormecontacts.com/splash.htm. But I could not find the entire link on the page with the “out” in it. I will keep investigating this one and let me know if you have any additional advice on resolving.

I downloaded the zipped access log file from CPanel and when I unzipped the file it is a dos application. The help file says I can open it with a text editor. When I tried opening the file with Textpad I just got hex jibberish. Any thoughts on opening the access log file.

Thanks again for all of your help.

Cheers,

Peter

Yes, http://www.example.com/page/www.example.com makes much more sense, glad to hear it lead to a solution.

For the second issue, any instance of “out” (with or without the other characters) should be carefully scrutinized. A number of steps are involved in the processing of URL requests, such that “out” could end up in the URL even though it’s not initially displayed literally anywhere on the site.

It could also be that your site/server is being scanned by scripts and bots that tend to target weird made-up URLs like the ones you’re seeing. If this is the case, find those requests in the access log and see if the “referrer” is your domain or somewhere else.

And speaking of access logs.. not sure why that may be happening, but can take a look if you can send a zipped copy of the file via my contact form: https://perishablepress.com/contact/

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the offer to take a look at the log file. Yesterday when I was in CPanel I set it to archive logs in my home directory at the end of each stats run. I downloaded that file and I was able to unzip it and view it in Weblog Expert. Now I just need to figure out what I’m looking for :-)

The other file that I can’t view is close 4Megs and I’m guessing it is the error log file from the beginning of the web site. If you are interested I can still send it your way, but for now I’m going to download and review the daily logs.

Thanks again for your excellent support. It is very appreciated.

Cheers,

Peter