Numerous 404 errors reported via Google Webmaster Tools

[hobodave]

The Events calendar is generating links to non-existent content causing Google to detect literally thousands of 404s within a site. The links match the following format:

/events/2013-10-01/ical/ — 404

These are being generated on the day view within the “+ ICAL IMPORT DAY’S EVENTS” button.

Also this is somewhat related, but you’re also generating links that 503 when they overflow the date. These are the following format:

/events/category/some-category/2038-1/

These are generated for each category and are on the December 2037 calendar view page. If you click the “January >>>” link you encounter the error. Google crawls this obviously and alerts you to increased 503 errors on your site.

[ISANS]

Seconded. My webmaster tools are sending me alerts for hundreds of crawl errors that are link to the events calendar. Due to empty dates or months.

[synergy]

I too have this problem with the Community Events Plugin.
Over 5000 404s returned to Google since I installed the Events plugin.

Any patches or fixes found ?

[Barry]

Hi everyone.

We do have a fix for part of the 404 problem – please see here – however that does not encompass those 404s stemming from iCal links nor the 503 issue you described (hobodave).

I’ll definitely report those issues – and will update you with any workarounds that might help (if appropriate).

[Barry]

Though not perfect (it won’t work quite as expected when a real users changes the date or navigates forward/backward by ajax) this code which you could add to your theme’s functions.php file should help with the problem on a search-engine level.

[Barry]

And (again imperfect but possibly useful as a stopgap measure) this snippet might help mitigate the problem with 503s on affected installations.

[synergy]

I have applied the patches, will report back in a couple of days.Thanks

[Barry]

Please do 🙂

[synergy]

Tried all the patches and not change, 100 404s sisnce yesterday. I am using the Community Events with Events Calendar Standard.
Have disabled the plugins for the minute for fear my web ranking may be affected as the 404s are being generated when robots index site.

[Barry]

That’s disappointing, but if you want to create your own thread (so you can share your URL with us) and are able to pinpoint the source of some of those errors then we could do our best to assist further.

[Barry]

Hi all: just wanted to drop in and note that we’ve made some improvements here – particularly to resolve problems where server errors were being noted by Google for dates pre-1970 and post-2037 – and these changes should roll out with the next maintenance release over the course of the next week or so.

Thanks again for your patience and support to date.

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
and one of the team will be only too happy to help.

[Author]

Posts