Non-Existing Page actually does exist…

Sal,

I have had this happen a few times when the web server’s timeout is set too low, and a page takes too long to load. It can be hard to track down unless you’re using the site at the time it happens, and see the 404 “not found” page yourself.

When you have seen other pages like this as well, have they all been around the same time, or is it randomly throughout the day (or days)?

Another possibility just to check — is any portion of the URL wrapped onto the next line in the Live Traffic page? Sometimes, a bad CSS background (or similar things) can cause another directory/folder (like “something/”) to appear at the end of the URL, and generate that error, and some browsers might wrap the link in the Live Traffic report.

Hi Matt,

Thank you for writing back. Actually, I can see this happen when I load the page from another browser – myself. The URL is intact (one line) as well. Strange. I don’t know what could be causing this. Perhaps a plugin…

Sal C.

Sal,

Thanks for the follow-up. When you saw it happen, was the site responding slowly, or did it still load in under a few seconds? And does the same page load properly if you try again a second time? Also, is it always on pages in /members, or can it be elsewhere?

You are correct that it could be another plugin. Or, it may also be settings on your host. They may be able to help you find error logs for the site (the date/time that it happens will help them find the right part).

Hi Matt,

It happens on various pages all over the place. And the site is loading quickly. Yes, I can load the page again consecutively. It’s really strange. I kinda hope it’s not only happening to me. :p I mean – perhaps it’s nothing to worry about at all. WordFence is telling me there’s a problem but it actually doesn’t “appear” to be a problem. I just hope that’s the case…

Sal C.

Ok, I’m still thinking it’s probably a plugin conflict or settings on the host that are causing the problem. You could try disabling any plugins that you don’t absolutely need, and see if the problem still happens.

Just in case, I would also try running a Wordfence scan manually, to see if any issues come up. If there is a broken piece of malware somewhere, it might cause that effect. Also, you could check your .htaccess file, to see if there is anything unusual. (If you’re not sure what to look for, you can post it here, but if it is more than 10 lines long, please use Pastebin, and just post a link to it here. Be sure to take out any confidential information, if there is any.)

I am also experiencing this issue. The pages exist but report as 404s. I don’t recall seeing as many of these before.

I am seeing several 404 on existing pages too. In my case, this plugin sees page redirects as 404 errors.
I’m using WPML. Example:

/es/page -> redirects to -> /page

and the plugin shows /es/page as a 404 error.

I also see 404 erros on direct links, but as you said, maybe is caused by slow response times.

I also have this problem on my site. The page exists, I click through, the page displays ok. THE 404 ERROR PAGE IS NOT BEING ACTIVATED. There is definitely something buggy going on here.

In Live Traffic it is showing the page does not exist. But it changes, as the history in Live Traffic gets older, Wordfence changes its story from tried to visit non-existing page to visited the page. And it doesn’t necessarily throw the error every time either. I’m not having any trouble with page load times, the pages I am loading are a simple forms, almost nothing on them.

I thought at first it was because I was using shortlinks instead of the full url to link to the pages, but replacing all the shortlinks with the actual page url’s did not solve the problem.

The only thing I can think of that might be throwing WF off is that I am using Foundation Reveal to popup a modal window with more info on a product. Inside that modal window are the links to the pages that are sometimes erroring. The popup window is coded into separate template that the Foundation Reveal calls in. So alot of nested code before you get to these links, but everything is working. Just the error code from WF is the only problem.

Oh, and my security settings are tight, so people are being throttled because of this error which is what brought my attention to it.

new_B, IvanRF, and bpebble: The additional details help, but can you each create a new post about this? The www.remarpro.com rules say we should have separate posts for each person, and I’m going to ask a number of questions about each of your sites, so that will also help make all of the answers easier to follow.

Here are the questions:

1. Are you running a regular WordPress site or multisite?
2. How often does this happen? Multiple times per day?
3. Can you post a screenshot (or two) showing the 404 error and a normal visit for the same page? You can block out the site name and end of the IP address, if you want.
4. Which other plugins do you have enabled?
5. If you know, is your host using Apache, or a different web server? (If you don’t mind linking to your site, I can check.)

bpebble: Also in your case, since you mentioned the “non-existing” items in the report are changing — do you mean that if you see a visit at 12 PM that has a 404, the same 12 PM visit later says it isn’t a 404? Or that another visit at 12:15 hits the same page and isn’t a 404?

Please also include a link to this post in your new post, so we can follow the background information. Thanks!

SalCollaziano: We have logged an issue with the dev team for this problem, which is likely to be the same issue that you were having, so it should be fixed in a future version of Wordfence. If you find it happens when visiting certain links on your site, those links may be causing a 301 redirect, which is triggering the incorrect 404 in the Live Traffic page. If you’re still having this problem and it doesn’t seem to be related, feel free to reply or create a new post. Thanks!

Everyone else: Thank you also for your input in the other posts, which helped to narrow down the issue.

-Matt R

FB889

Hi, I have the same problem. In live traffic it shows visits to non-existing pages only while i am running an Adwords campaign and all my links there are good. At the same time I have high bounce rate, so I am sure that something is going wrong. Everytime i go to my website, I don’t see any problem. Please advice if it can be something connected to the plugin? Thanks in advance.

@alina1988: If it only happens while using AdWords, you might need to check the domain you’re using on AdWords, especially making sure that if your site normally uses “www.domain.com” that the ads aren’t using “domain.com” without the w’s. (Or the opposite case.) Depending on how the server is set up, both of these could make the 404 messages.

If you still have trouble and need more details, please make a new post using the form at the bottom of the Wordfence forum here. (The www.remarpro.com forum rules ask us to keep each person’s issues separate, and it also helps us keep track of open issues, so no one gets skipped in long posts.) Thanks!

-Matt R