• Resolved satsoklgr

    (@satsoklgr)


    Hi

    In Google console, I have lots of soft 404 errors due to Wordfence created empty pages which give HTTP status 200 instead of 404 or better 410
    EXAMPLE: https://domain.com/?wordfence_lh=1&hid=A3AA5023EBC1FA6AA96CB45BA558FBBE
    the numbers are different in each url.
    If I deactivate wordfence these pages automatically redirect to the home page, so they give a status 301 and they will vanish in some time.

    I have two choices:

    One is to redirect them to the home page with this code in .htaccess

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} .
    RewriteRule ^ %{REQUEST_URI}?wordfence_lh=1&hid= [R=301,L]

    And the other option is to say to G that they are gone with this:

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} .
    RewriteRule ^ %{?wordfence_lh=1&hid=}? [R=410,L]

    Both work, but…

    After any of these two, LOGIN and LOGOUT are not working, because the login/logout uris contain the same strings that I use for redirecting or give status 410, so we have a redirecting loop here.

    Sort answer: What to do?
    If I leave it like this these pages will never go as they give status 200

    • This topic was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by satsoklgr.
    • This topic was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by satsoklgr.
Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Thread Starter satsoklgr

    (@satsoklgr)

    Found a good solution
    Erase Wordfence.
    It had always vulnerabilities anyway, something that means that the site is more secure without it.

    Plugin Support WFAdam

    (@wfadam)

    Hello @satsoklgr and thanks for reaching out to us!

    The URL you provided is generated by the Wordfence firewall. When you visit the URL, what do you see?

    Also, are you using any caching on the site? It’s possible that the JavaScript used to generate these has been cached in the HTML.

    If you decide to reinstall Wordfence, I would be happy to help you resolve this issue.

    Let me know what you find and best of luck to you!

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter satsoklgr

    (@satsoklgr)

    When I visit the URL I see nothing, white screen, and the page source has absolutely nothing.
    Checking the HTTP status in some online tools it returns status 200.

    If the plugin is deactivated, all these pages redirecting to the home page.

    All these pages, according to google console, were created end of May, after this period not.
    But the bad thing is that they don’t go away, they give this silly 200 status.

    My only option is to keep the plugin deactivated for some months at least until they vanish, the two solutions I tried with .htaccess change the status to 301 or 410 but don’t allow me to log in or log out as I wrote in the first post.

    I have no option. Unless there is another solution to redirect.

    Thread Starter satsoklgr

    (@satsoklgr)

    Well, I found another way.
    Only with Redirection plugin, but I must create 400 rules to redirect every single string indexed in console, to the home page!
    This way, login, and logout works.

    But, this is a job for prisoners!!!

    Plugin Support WFAdam

    (@wfadam)

    Wordfence ?wordfence_lh=1&hid= query string URL’s are used by Live Traffic. They should load a blank page when visited directly. In some cases, this is due to poorly coded themes or code being added to your theme and instead of a blank page being generated the home page loads instead. This causes Google to index the ?wordfence_lh=1&hid= query string URL’s as Google sees them as legitimate site pages.

    If Google Search Console is now reporting soft 404’s as you say then the problem has since been resolved as the ?wordfence_lh=1&hid= query string URL’s would now be loading a blank page and that is why Google is reporting soft 404’s as there is a correct 200 OK response but the home page content is now missing that was there before.

    This is likely due to switching themes or the bad custom code was removed/fixed.

    Let me know if this helps!

    Thanks!

    Thread Starter satsoklgr

    (@satsoklgr)

    Things are as you describe, I wrote this before but perhaps it wasn’t so clear.

    With plugin active, yes these pages are not loading the home page, they give a 200 status empty page, correct.
    With the plugin deactivated, these pages are loading the home page!

    This causes Google to index the ?wordfence_lh=1&hid= query string URL’s as Google sees them as legitimate site pages.

    Yes, this is the case.

    This is likely due to switching themes or the bad custom code was removed/fixed.

    This is possible, as google crawled these pages from 27-30 of May, only!

    Now, the only problem is how to remove them, and the only way is to make them return a 410 status.
    If I do this via htaccess, I can’t login/logout.

    Thankfully I managed to do this by adding one by one to the redirection plugin, now all of them are returning 410 status, and hopefully, they will be removed from google index.

    Now wordfence is active again and works without problems.

    Thanks for your help.

    Plugin Support WFAdam

    (@wfadam)

    Thanks for letting me know how this worked @satsoklgr

    Google should remove the 410s and this should correct the indexing issue.

    Let me know if it doesn’t and we can dive deeper.

    Thanks again for your support!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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