Google not finding pages - url with %20? - UK Web Hosting | Dedicated Server Windows and Linux VPS Forum

**Notspot** · #1 (**permalink**) 05-12-2007, 14:34

Hi,

Just checking my google webmaster tools and it has listed a number of pages that it couldn't find (they are there) but it had a curious %20 in front of them, eg.

www.mysite.com/%20mypage.html

instead of

www.mysite.com/mypage.html

Anyone know what this means and what I can do to sort it out? It's impacting some of my stronger pages which have been completely removed from google.

**Hallief3** · #2 (**permalink**) 05-12-2007, 15:25

It usually means that there is a space in the file name at the start.

**Notspot** · #3 (**permalink**) 05-12-2007, 18:06

Yeah, that was my first thought - I've gone through all the pages and there's no spaces where there shouldn't be.

I'm thinking this is something to do with the server 'cos it's an intermittent problem. To safeguard against this happening again does anyone know how to 301 redirect something with a space in it (htaccess), I've tried:-

redirect301 /%20mypage.html http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html
and
redirect301 / mypage.html http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html

but both don't work.

I'm stumped on this one.

**eUKhost.com** · #4 (**permalink**) 05-12-2007, 20:25

google must have found those links from other parts of your website hosting or external links which use space in between. simply add a 301 redirect for those invalid URL's to appropriate URL's as those will become your backlinks with proper 301 redirect rules.

301 redirect can be added from your .htaccess file. like this :-

redirect 301 /dedicated.php http://www.eukhost.com/dedicated-server-hosting.php
redirect 301 /packages.php http://www.eukhost.com/cpanel-web-hosting.php
redirect 301 /resellers.php http://www.eukhost.com/reseller-hosting.php

**Notspot** · #5 (**permalink**) 05-12-2007, 20:42

Yeah, but that doesn't seem to work when you've got the problem '%20' in it, I've tried the two examples below and it still returns me to a 'page not found' page.

redirect 301 /%20mypage.html http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html
redirect 301 / mypage.html http://www.mysite.com/mypage.html

Anyone know how to make these work? Or is there something I'm missing here?

**DPS Computing** · #6 (**permalink**) 06-12-2007, 13:07

It would seem strange that the %20 alone is causing you the problems. I have never heard of this before. Have you got an example page we could look at and try to access?