redirect on 404, how to disable

  • Resolved mbeerli

    (@mbeerli)


    3 years, 10 months ago

    Hello John,
    I have strange live traffic on Wordfence and had it analyzed by wordfence.
    Here the outcome
    I have reviewed the link mentioned in your original post and notice that either a .htaccess RewriteRule or other theme/plugin action is converting query strings into searchable WordPress terms on your website. The usual action for a url ending with ?wordfence_logHuman=1&hid=6ADB7DE84A85D7F4E428BFD37BF6CE46 is to display a blank page, but the URL that resolves on your site when trying this is actually ?s=%3Fwordfence+logHuman%3D1%26hid%3D6ADB7DE84A85D7F4E428BFD37BF6CE46&search_404=1

    This shows ?s= has been appended to the URL to treat the query string as a WordPress search and search_404=1 appears at the end. This seems to be a setting where 404s are turned into search terms rather than resolving as the usual “File Not Found”. I can see a table in your database called wp_redirection_404 which seems to relate to a plugin called Redirection (redirection) – Version 5.1.1

    To restore the usual functionality of the Wordfence querystrings resolving a blank page so that Google doesn’t index them, you will need to either disable this plugin, or configure it so that our query strings are not affected by the redirect action. Google will also be indexing any links that are converted in this manner, not just Wordfence.

    I now have added a redirection rule on above but all I really need is if there is a 404 to not automatically search and append the URL, can that be turned of?

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
  • Plugin Author John Godley

    (@johnny5)

    This is not something that Redirection does, and Wordfence seem mistaken. The 404 log table keeps a log of 404s, it does not convert them into search queries.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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