RSS Feed Syntax Error
By Chris Chase on Tuesday, 28 August 2018
Posted in General Issues
Replies 5
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Hi Support,

We're having an issue with some RSS feeds on one of our websites, firstcolumn.com. Google and other spiders are crawling the site and finding RSS feeds with URLs similar to this: https://www.firstcolumn.com/component/easyblog/tags/upgrade?Itemid=963%3fformat=feed&type=rss

If you go to this URL in your browser, you'll receive a 1064 SQL Syntax error. Reviewing this, I've found that the %3f in the URL should be a &. When you go to the RSS feed referenced by this URL on the actual site, though, it comes up correctly, but with a different structure entirely (https://www.firstcolumn.com/blog/tags/upgrade?format=feed&type=rss).

Any ideas as to what might be causing this syntax error?
https://www.firstcolumn.com/component/easyblog/tags/upgrade?Itemid=963%3fformat=feed&type=rss

I believe that is false alarm, can you check again and see whether Google got show you when they crawl into this RSS feed URL?

Because the correct URL should be this one :
[gist type="php"]
https://www.firstcolumn.com/blog/tags/upgrade?format=feed&type=rss
[/gist]
Arlex Wong
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Tuesday, 28 August 2018 10:33
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Hi Arlex,

According to our Search Console console for the site, it is how they're indexing them in this p-articular case: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aqAUVpvEP4ZVUwt5JVQ3nmTQrG6A2uFx/view

You're right, the URLs are completely different, but Google must be getting to them somehow.
Chris Chase
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Tuesday, 28 August 2018 21:17
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Yes, it might be when Google indexed your site that time, your single tag and category page already render this URL on the site.

Can you check what is there menu type for these menu item id?

- 963
- 952

By the way, when i trying to access these following single tag and single category page, it seems like I no longer able to access these page on your site now.
https://www.firstcolumn.com/components/easyblog/categories/security
https://www.firstcolumn.com/components/easyblog/tags/upgrade

Perhaps you can wait for Google re-index your site another time and see whether it still index these page again?
Arlex Wong
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Wednesday, 29 August 2018 10:36
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Hi Arlex,

it does sound like waiting for a re-index may be our only solution for this.

As for those id numbers you pointed out, one belongs to the First Column Enterprises Blog category in the backend of the site. Not sure about 952 though, as it doesn't look like it exists.

And for reference, these are the URLs to the individual category/tag pages:

https://www.firstcolumn.com/blog/categories/security
https://www.firstcolumn.com/blog/tags/upgrade

I'll discuss with our SEO team about exactly what we want to do about this.

If you have any other insights, let me know.
Chris Chase
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Wednesday, 29 August 2018 22:50
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Yes, you have to wait for Google to re-crawl your site again or you can manually re-submit your sitemap file to Google.

You can read more this link : https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183668?hl=en

As for those id numbers you pointed out, one belongs to the First Column Enterprises Blog category in the backend of the site. Not sure about 952 though, as it doesn't look like it exists.

If this menu item id 952 doesn't exist, which mean that this menu item id 952 already get removed, if not, Google will not able to crawl this page regarding this menu item id.
Arlex Wong
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Thursday, 30 August 2018 10:00
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