Chaos in URLs and errors 404 following permalinks modifications

  • My current WP configuration
    ? PHP / MySQL version: less than 5.6
    ? Theme used: Viewport
    ? Extensions: Askimet, AMP, Google Adsense, GADWP, Image Widget, Polylang, Publish to Apple News, Redirection, Simple Light Box, WP Rocket, Yoast
    ? Name of the host: Infomaniak
    ? Website address: yesicannes.com and yesicannes.com/fr

    Issue encountered: Chaos in URLs and errors 404 following permalinks modifications

    Hi there,

    Two changes I did in permalinks resulted in a chaos in the URLs, causing countless errors 404.

    YesICannes is a web magazine in 2 languages: yesicannes.com and yesicannes.com/fr. Our articles are indexed in GoogleNews, so the articles’ URLs must include some numbers.

    Until recently, my permalinks were: yesicannes.com/%postname%
    To add the numbers desired by Google, I used to preview the post and then manually added the generated “post id”, separated from the title of the article by a “-“.

    Then, I thought to do this insertion automatically by modifying the permalinks with the following form: yesicannes.com/%postname%/%post_id%/.
    Surprisingly, the links were displaying: yesicannes.com/postname/post_id/post_id/ with twice the number automatically inserted (!?)
    But I did not get an alert from Google.

    But I thought that with a “/” as a separator, it did not look like the URLs I created so far, and I changed the permalinks a second time from “/” to “-” to get yesicannes.com/postname%-%post_id%/

    I then started receiving calls from visitors who had 404 errors in the latest published reports and Goolge sent me a mail talking about augmented 404 errors on https://yesicannes.com/ and https://yesicannes.com/fr/, (type message [WNC-658800]).

    Well, I understand that going from “/” to “_” can create 404 errors, and I realize my mistake. But the problem is more disturbing: the 404 errors display this kind of link, i.e. whereas the normal URL is: https://yesicannes.com/fr/mouratoglou-tennis-academy-sophia-antipolis-33009), the bad link is:

    https://yesicannes.com/fr/mouratoglou-tennis-academy-sophia-antipolis-33009/33009/mouratoglou-tennis-academy-inauguration-10/

    Another example of error 404: (whereas https://yesicannes.com/fr/mouans-sartoux-miel-ciel-provence-36831/ is good)

    https://yesicannes.com/fr/mouans-sartoux-miel-ciel-provence-36831/36831/fete-du-miel-mouans-sartoux-2017-12/

    The number is repeated with some kind of replication of the name of the post… Would anyone have an idea of what is happening and how to overcome this embarrassing situation?

    Thank you in advance for your help.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

  • Looks like you need to setup 301’s to preserve your SEO.

    A 404 is a not found response from the server as you probably know, so to fix this, you need to redirect the old URL’s to the new URL’s. You can do this with YoastSEO premium, Simple 301 Redirects or server side if you’re comfortable with that.

    Once you’ve set up the redirects (Old URL redirects to the new URL), you should be okay. You can use Screaming Frog or Google Webmaster Tools to find 404’s then check 301’s are working.

    Good luck on this, you’ve got your work cut out ??

    Thread Starter YesICannes

    (@yesicannes)

    Hi AshboDev,

    Many thanks for your answer. I know what 404s are.

    The problem is: there are thousands of bad links, generate I don’t know why.

    I can’t redirect all the links like that. I have to understand where all these bad links come from – obviously from the changes in permalinks -, as shown in the two example.

    Any idea ? I could’nt find an answer in Frech forums…

    • This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by YesICannes.
Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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