External Client Error (4XX)
What This Means
External URLs with a client-side error. This indicates a problem occurred with the URL request and can include responses such as 400 bad request, 403 Forbidden, 404 Page Not Found, 410 Removed, 429 Too Many Requests and more. A 404 ‘Page Not Found’ is the most common, and often referred to as a broken link.
What Triggers This Issue
This issue is triggered when an external URL responds with a client-side error (4xx response code), such as a 404 ‘Page Not Found’. For example: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Content-Type: text/html Content-Length: 216
How To Fix
All links on a website should ideally resolve to 200 ‘OK’ URLs. Errors such as 404 broken links should be updated so users are taken to the correct URL, or removed. A 403 forbidden error is also common on the web today and occurs when a web server denies access to the SEO Spider’s request. This isn’t usually an issue for users if accessible in a browser, and can be ignored. A 403 error can often be resolved by switching the user-agent to Chrome via ‘Config > User-Agent’ and crawling again. Please read our FAQs on each of the other following common responses: