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    #1

    Google soft 404 error coming from displayStock javascript

    Google webmaster tools is reporting a soft 404 error for st000001.pl that it's picking up from the displayStock javascript routine.

    i.e. this is what's on the webpages:

    Code:
    function displayStock()
{
var sProdRefs = ""; 
var sStockList = ""; 
getSectionStock('http://www.thiswouldbemydomain.co.uk/cgi-bin/st000001.pl', '160', sProdRefs, sStockList, '');	
}
    Is anyone else seeing this? google say they've been seeing it since the end of may.

    Can anyone help me understand why this is and how to prevent it? I guess I could always just block it in the robots.txt but something a bit less brute force might be better.

    PS. This is in V11 but I've seen the same code in a 2014 site. Not sure about 2016.
    -----------------------------------------

    First Tackle - Fly Fishing and Game Angling

    -----------------------------------------
    Tags: None
    #2
    Originally posted by Mike Hughes View Post
    Google webmaster tools is reporting a soft 404 error for st000001.pl that it's picking up from the displayStock javascript routine.

    i.e. this is what's on the webpages:

    Code:
    function displayStock()
{
var sProdRefs = ""; 
var sStockList = ""; 
getSectionStock('http://www.thiswouldbemydomain.co.uk/cgi-bin/st000001.pl', '160', sProdRefs, sStockList, '');	
}
    Is anyone else seeing this? google say they've been seeing it since the end of may.

    Can anyone help me understand why this is and how to prevent it? I guess I could always just block it in the robots.txt but something a bit less brute force might be better.

    PS. This is in V11 but I've seen the same code in a 2014 site. Not sure about 2016.
    That is a request to the perl file handling stock and a similar call exists in all versions with Real Time Stock control.

    First question is what happened in May, did you upgrade SellerDeck? This may be related to the other threads regarding the 500 server error as in both cases a Perl file is involved.

    Malcolm
    SellerDeck Accredited Partner,
    SellerDeck 2016 Extensions, and
    Custom Packages

    Comment

      #3
      That is a request to the perl file handling stock and a similar call exists in all versions with Real Time Stock control.
      OK. So the same thing is still in the latest version.

      First question is what happened in May, did you upgrade SellerDeck? This may be related to the other threads regarding the 500 server error as in both cases a Perl file is involved.
      Nope. No sellerdeck upgrade, no change in May. My server hasn't been updated yet and I check at least once a day as I'm sure it will happen soon.

      I suspect this is Google trying to crawl more pages by reading more javascript and getting itself into difficulties. The thing is they don't like the resulting error and so give me this in webmaster tools:

      Last crawled: 5/31/16
      First detected: 5/31/16
      The target URL doesn't exist, but your server is not returning a 404 (file not found) error. Learn more
      Your server returns a code other than 404 or 410 for a non-existent page (or redirecting users to another page, such as the homepage, instead of returning a 404). This creates a poor experience for searchers and search engines.
      Sellerdeck, unsurprising, doesn't like the blank call of the script and is giving a general script error. i.e.

      A General Script Error Occurred

      Error: The input is NULL
      Press the Browser back button and try again or contact the site owner.
      So......

      I just tried a 'fetch as Google' from webmaster tools and Google seems happy with the result so I'll mark it as solved and leave it there. It looks like an error on their part. For information the page comes back to Google as:

      ​HTTP/1.1 200 OK
      Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2016 13:58:08 GMT
      Server: Apache
      Content-length: 190
      Keep-Alive: timeout=2, max=199
      Connection: Keep-Alive
      Content-Type: text/html

      <HTML><TITLE>Actinic</TITLE><BODY><H1>A General Script Error Occurred</H1><HR>Error: The input is NULL<HR>Press the Browser back button and try again or contact the site owner.</BODY></HTML>
      Which all looks fine to me. So problem solved (or was never there in the first place). Thanks for the help.

      Mike
      -----------------------------------------

      First Tackle - Fly Fishing and Game Angling

      -----------------------------------------

      Comment

        #4
        Originally posted by Mike Hughes View Post
        Sellerdeck, unsurprising, doesn't like the blank call of the script and is giving a general script error.

        Mike
        Hi Mike

        That is the usual type of response from the perl scripts if they are not called with the right parameters, so not really a problem at all.

        Malcolm
        SellerDeck Accredited Partner,
        SellerDeck 2016 Extensions, and
        Custom Packages

        Comment

          #5
          Hi Malcolm,

          Yes, I know. The only the problem on this was Google webmaster tools complaining about a soft page error when trying to access the file.

          This seems to have been a temporary blip by Google or the server.

          Mike
          -----------------------------------------

          First Tackle - Fly Fishing and Game Angling

          -----------------------------------------

          Comment

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