SOMEWHERE there's a bad profile link?

[DisasterDotCom]

I have a utility that tracks 404 errors on the site (outside of vBulletin) and I'm getting a lot of 404's for profiles that look like this:

http://www.disaster.com/forumshttp://www.disaster.com/forums/member/26-colebra

The search engines have found it, and - as a result - I'm seeing my crawl errors climb quickly in Google Webmaster Tools (which is a bad thing).

Somewhere, there's a link to profiles that is bad, but I have no idea how to find it. Can you help me track it down?

[Wayne Luke]

What is the referrer of that link?

[DisasterDotCom]

No referer, but here's how it appears in the log:

GET /forumshttp:/www.disaster.com/forums/member/26-colebra

It's Google finding it, so it has to be somewhere.

[Wayne Luke]

Just because Google is linking to something doesn't mean it is actually in the software. Due to phrases and variables, this will be almost impossible to find. Do you have sitemap.xml generation turned on? If so, can you search those files for the link?

[Wayne Luke]

I've gone through all the links that I can think of on this forum that lead to profiles and can't replicate the issue. Have you modified any of the files or the .htaccess file in anyway?

[glennrocksvb]

I think I've found that somewhere before in Message Center (I think). But I can't find anymore (maybe it got fixed or I don't have enough message type?)

[Wayne Luke]

I think I've found that somewhere before in Message Center (I think). But I can't find anymore (maybe it got fixed or I don't have enough message type?)

Google shouldn't have access to any links on that page though. Google is a guest and only has access to index guest pages.

[Mark.B]

I've seen this before...I thought it had been fixed.

It's in the message center, when reading a PM (the full PM, not the preview)...your avatar and username link to this (this is from my demo site):
http://www.talknewsuk.com/testvbhttp://www.talknewsuk.com/testvb/member/1-mark-b

No idea how that would end up in Google though since it's never visible to guests.

[DisasterDotCom]

Yeah... that's weird... there is no access for guests (hopefully) to someone else's private messages.

It's not in the sitemap, and .htaccess hasn't been modified, so Google is picking it up on a crawl somewhere. If I was to rgrep for a string, what are the variables that would possibly create that URL?

[glennrocksvb]

I've seen this before...I thought it had been fixed.

It's in the message center, when reading a PM (the full PM, not the preview)...your avatar and username link to this (this is from my demo site):
http://www.talknewsuk.com/testvbhttp://www.talknewsuk.com/testvb/member/1-mark-b

No idea how that would end up in Google though since it's never visible to guests.

I found it now. It's in one of my PMs. The weird thing is it's not consistent. I only saw one (at least) instance of the wrong url for my profile in one of my posts in a single PM thread. The rest of the posts in that particular PM thread all have the correct profile url.

[DisasterDotCom]

Any clue on the variables to rgrep for? Or search the mysql database for?

[DisasterDotCom]

BTW - while I wait to see if there's a variable to rgrep for... I am seeing that issue in the private message area... when I click on a profile link for someone who has sent me a PM, it's going to http://www.disaster.com/forumshttp://www.disaster.com/forums/member/<membername>

[glennrocksvb]

Found it again on my latest reply to a PM here.

I have no idea what's causing this. The postbit area is the conversation_userinfo template and this is being reused in topic detail page in different places.

[Mark.B]

I do recall looking at this some time ago, and the URL seems correctly formed in the templates, so there must be something in the code to cause this.

[glennrocksvb]

I do recall looking at this some time ago, and the URL seems correctly formed in the templates, so there must be something in the code to cause this.

Agreed. And to make it even harder, the issue does not happen consistently.