Mini Mods - HTTP Error Response Codes by BOP5 (Soft 404 Solution)

Brought to you by BirdOPrey5 / Qapla.com

This issue was brought to my attention by Sherrie at TAZ in this thread.

The issue is that when Google crawls a site and runs into the vBulletin No Permission message or other standard vBulletin error pages vBulletin gives the standard "200" HTTP response code which means everything is OK, even though there is no real content on these pages. Therefore Google considers these "soft errors" and they can damage overall SEO of your site if there are too many of them.

What this does is make vBulletin return standard HTTP "Error" responses- by default 403 (Not Authorized) for No Permission pages and 404 (Not Found) for general error messages. When Google sees these responses (as opposed to 200) it knows not to bother indexing the page and everyone is happy.

As of version 2.2 new options have been added to return custom response codes when the forum is closed or when the forum is busy. It will also send a retry header telling the crawler they can try again later. As of version 2.0 there is also a separate response code for search.php errors.

A limitation of this mod is it works best with PHP 5.4.0 or higher. As of version 2.0 If you are on an older version of PHP it may not work, but it should not cause any errors, so it is worth trying.

There are no instructions, once installed it is enabled by default. In Admin CP -> Settings -> Options -> HTTP Error Responses by BOP5 you can enable/disable the mod and choose the response codes you want for the different error types. You can use any standard HTTP response code available from this list at wikipedia.

The mod works fine on VB 3.x or 4.x including VB 3.8.8 (still in Beta) and VB 4.2.2.

To test that it is working use a free online status checker such as: http://httpstatus.io/
(Note the site will cache your result for a while so test with a unique URL each time.)

Before you install the mod any URL that will show a no-permission or other vBulletin error will show a status code of 200. After installing the same page will show a 403, 404, or other code that you have configured.

Added Boothby as a "co-author" as thanks for his contribution of code and ideas. :up:

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[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by DemOnstar

Apache version 2.2.27
PHP version 5.2.17
MySQL version 5.5.37-log

Not sure what is happening really. All a bit random. I get access from one place but not from another.

Do you have cloudflare? They were having problems yesterday- unsure if they were solved- I'm guessing they were at some point.

[DemOnstar]

I don't have cloudflare.

It is wrong to blame this mod for this error as I am not entirely sure what the problem is yet.

[ezak]

not working for me , or I don't understand well
testing thread that is hidden from guest or it has been deleted
like this
http://www.gem-flash.com/vb/showthread.php?t=1
http://httpstatus.io/ said 404
also google webmaster said not found

I have DBoptimize, DBSEO, XCache all enabled

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by ezak

not working for me , or I don't understand well
testing thread that is hidden from guest or it has been deleted
like this
http://www.gem-flash.com/vb/showthread.php?t=1
http://httpstatus.io/ said 404
also google webmaster said not found

I have DBoptimize, DBSEO, XCache all enabled

404 means it is working, at leas partially. If it wasn't working it would show 200.

The exact code it should show in this case is configurable in settings.

[ezak]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

404 means it is working, at leas partially. If it wasn't working it would show 200.

The exact code it should show in this case is configurable in settings.

so to be useful from the mod
change all status to 200 ?

its realy working when change Generic Error HTTP Code to 200 , its wokring and send 200 status
what should I do then , change all to 200 ?
your site is sending 404 in your wrong thread

[BirdOPrey5]

If you disable the mod Google will get 200.

The purpose of this mod is to change 200 to 404 (or some other number.)

When google gets 200 but can'tr read the thread it's considered a "soft 404" error which is bad for SEO.

When google gets a 404 it knows it is a bad page and stops looking for it- it is less bad for SEO.

[ezak]

thanks for your reply
I want to know something about another error
vb/showthread.php?t=222053
this thread is hidden from guest
and from HTTP status got error 403

is that normal ? and good for seo ?

[BirdOPrey5]

403 is again from this mod and yes it is better Google sees a 403 than a 200 on a page they cannot read the real content of.

[Black Snow]

Could you add a rewrite rule to your .htaccess file that directs all 200 pages to 403 pages instead of insalling this mod? Was curious about what difference it would make.

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by Black Snow

Could you add a rewrite rule to your .htaccess file that directs all 200 pages to 403 pages instead of insalling this mod? Was curious about what difference it would make.

All "200" pages would mean every page on your site- that would be worse than not doing anything at all.