I received a message from google wmt about increasing amount of 403 forbidden errors coming from my forum. I noticed that the problem was relating to google seo plugin (1.6.5) and specifically from the file placed here: /inc/plugins/google_seo/404.php.
I replaced the line
function google_seo_404_no_permission()
{
global $google_seo_404_label;
$google_seo_404_label = "no_permission";
with
function google_seo_404_no_permission()
{
global $google_seo_404_label;
$google_seo_404_label = "nosearchresults";
result: files with status code 403, changed to 200. I keeped roboted those files to avoid duplicates but no more warning messages coming from gwt.
I would like to hear from developers if this would be fine or i'm missing something.
Thanks.
You can configure the error codes in the Google SEO 404 settings very specifically, no need to edit code for them. Therefore you should undo that code edit.
Besides, 301 is a redirect (moved permanently). There was a bug pertaining to redirect permission checks fixed in the last or so Google SEO update; make sure you're using the latest version and enable Redirect permission checking. That would fix the issue - if it's related to redirects for no permission pages anyway.
If there is an error (Google sees a no permissions page for whatever reason), just returning 200 OK anyway does not really solve the issue. You have to check whether or not Google should be allowed to view the content or not. See if Google Webmaster Tools tells you specifically which URL is affected, and if Google should be able to access that URL, see what happens when you use the "Fetch as Googlebot" feature in the webmaster tools.
Thanks for the reply, i made a misspelling error, status code to change was 403 forbidden (not 301). And there is no option or setting to modify in the tool settings at regard.
Type of files coming from newreply.php newthread.php
by checking the status code they all returned a 403 forbidden (reason of the warning sent by gwt).
After changes they return a status code 200 ok, and no more warning from gwt.
You should use a robots.txt to block Google from files it'll never have permission to anyway, such as writing new threads or replies.
Giving an error code for error pages is the correct thing to do - making them return 200 OK on the other hand is wrong.
If you do that, sure Google Webmaster Tools won't list them as outright errors anymore... instead it will try to index pages that have no content whatsoever.
Got it, in this case i will return to the original code, anyway this will not fix Google from sending such alerts.
Thanks for the help!