Strange "Not Found" Crawl Errors in WMT

[reggy]

I have been noticing the strange errors below under the Crawl Errors > Not Found section of WMT and I cant figure out how to get rid of them!


http://www.example.com/ <tr> <td valign=
http://www.example.com/index.php
http://www.example.com/home.htm
http://www.example.com/http://www.externalpage.com/somepage.html

I would be greatful if someone can give me some ideas :?

Thank You!

[edited by: tedster at 8:52 pm (utc) on May 18, 2011]
[edit reason] switch to example.com so URLs show up [/edit]

[g1smd]

These are caused by a post on some forum or blog where auto-linking is used and it has gone a bit haywire.

You'll need a rule in your .htaccess file to set a 301 redirect for those URLs so that you retain the visitor.

[Samizdata]

If they represent incorrect or malformed inbound links found by Google on other sites - possibly in the distant past, as Google never forgets - you could simply redirect them to your home page.

The errors in GWT would disappear (eventually) and you might pick up a little link juice.

...

[g1smd]

The index and home pages can be fixed using the standard code posted hundreds of times before on this forum.

The other URLs could be fixed using this code:

RewriteRule ^(http|%20|<|\ ) http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]

However that works only for root URLs. You will need different code if you have the same linking problems with internal pages.

[Key_Master]

Sometimes a 404 deserves to be a 404. I wouldn't do anything.