googlebot requesting URLs with only a single slash - http:/www...

requests for same page in 2 formats

[wanderingmind]

http:/www.site.com/filename.asp - 80 - 66.249.66.198 HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Googlebot/2.1;++http://www.google.com/bot.html)

Note that there is only a single / after http. A single slash? Why?

And this is immediately followed by the standard request
/filename.asp - 80 - 66.249.66.198 HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Googlebot/2.1;++http://www.google.com/bot.html)

Why is this? I dont think its some hijacking attempt, after all both the URLs are requested one after the other. I am seeing hundreds of these double requests.

Any idea why this happens?

[Vadim]

Could it be a user misprint, say, in Google toolbar or the misprint in a site (not yours)?. Google stored the wrong URL "as is" and now tries to check it.

Another idea. May be Google just checks your site response on the wrong URL.

Vadim

[tedster]

And this is immediately followed by the standard request

You didn't quote the server response to the first request, but it sounds like your server is feeding back a corrected url to googlebot. Depending on what that response is, exactly, you may be in good shape. But there's a chance the server is not giving the right response and then googlebot will never stop asking for the single slash.

The IP address you quoted is in the range owned by Google, so this is probably not a hack attempt by someone faking a googlebot user agent.

[wanderingmind]

Thanks Tedster and Vadim. The site is serving googlebot a 301 redirect and taking it to the correct URL which is [site.com...]

I suppose that 301 redirect which I did not my non-www canonical issues a year back is coming in handy!

Any idea what could be provoking such requests?

[tedster]

A typo in a link somewhere on the web seems most likely. Or, dare I say it, a typo made in someone's Google Toolbar?