Bloggery » March 18th, 2011
Solving GoDaddy 302 redirects to XXXX folder
I would like to share with you the problem which I faced with GoDaddy some time back when I upgraded my hosting account from their Economy to Deluxe hosting as a result of which they moved my files to a faster server. It started one day that when I checked my sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools, it gave an error message as posted below saying that my sitemap is a HTML file, but when I checked it is actually the correct XML file.
So when I used header checker tools like http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/ to check whats going on, I was shocked to see that GoDaddy redirecting all my requests like this 302-302-200 redirect response instead of giving a direct 200 Ok response. It happened for all pages hosted on the server. Requests for any URL are being 302 redirected to some crazy folder. For example, when I checked http://www.deepakjulien.com it automatically redirects to http://deeepakjulien.com/xxxxx/robots.txt where xxxxx is a string of characters that keeps changing every time. All the visitors to my site were able to browse the site normally but on the background the server was actually doing a 302 redirect which was not OK in googlebots wyes and it throws an error. It also reduced my rankings in the search engine for the same keywords for which I used to rank better previously. I suspected a virus or malware attack on my site but after checking all the files on the site I decided it is not a malware attack as all the files were intact and there are no new files. I deleted and recreated my sitemap.xml and .htaccess files but still the problem persisted.
I went through GoDaddy support forums and found many users having same problems but no definite solution. I made couple of long calls to GoDaddy customer support which repeatedly kept saying that this was a problem due to the scripts I am running on my WordPress installation but it is not.
Being fed up with the GoDaddy support, I decided to change few settings on my own to see if it helps. The first thing I did was to do a header check for a non existent file like http://yourdomain.com/nonecistantfile.html and I got a clean 404 error. So I decided to try changing settings on my own. I went to the DNS manager and updated the A record to the same IP address it was already there. For example the A record has 123.456.78.9 I edited it and again typed in the same information and saved the zone file again. I did the same for the nameservers as well. I edited the nameserver files and keyed in the same information that was already there and saved the zone file. I immediately got an automated email to my admin email address from Godaddy that the DNS has been edited and it will take few minutes to change. And Voila! in few minutes the site was perfectly OK and I was getting a 200 OK response. So if you have similar problems, I suggest you do the same what I did and if you need any more help on setting your name server, feel free to drop me a comment and I am glad to help you fox this otherwise mysterious issue.
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Thanks for the tip! I ran into the same problem, and searching for help just brought up pages and pages of people with the same problem, but no answers! Editing the DNS settings looks like it worked for me, and it gave me a chance to tidy up the zones. Thanks again!
Actually the problem is only partially fixed, and the redirect checker (brilliant tool) shows a 302 Found intermittently. The search continues…
@ Matt,
I am sorry that the above fix did not solve your problem once for all. Actually it did fix for me. But randomly, i again got into redirects. So, I finally fixed this problem once for all by upgrading to GoDaddy’s static IP. I can confirm, it fixed this redirect once for all.
@Matt
I am having the same issue. I fought with them the entire night yesterday but they were not ready to accept that there is an issue at their side.
Initially, they told me that the problem is with my .htaccess file or with the format of my sitemap file. I proved to them that both these claims are not correct. But still they kept on saying its a problem with my sitemap format.
Yesterday I was getting intermittent redirects. But today, at least until now, I am consistently getting 200 response. I just hope they have fixed the problem and are just not accepting that they had any.
Can you please check now if the problem is still there?
If the problem appears again I am planning to get a refund for my account.
-Cracker
I had a similar problem with redirects. I contacted godaddy’s help and eventually was able to solve the problem. The solution is simple. All you have to do is delete the www record from the CNAME records ans instead add www to the A record. This will solve your redirect issue. Both example.com and http://www.example.com will resolve without redirection. This worked for me and now everything is working fine.
@akd1508 – Did you find the solution yourself or did GoDaddy provide it to you?
@cracker . Godaddy told me to change the settings so I changed them. Unfortunately the problem was resolved only temporarily and I am having the same redirect issue again. I guess the only solution would be to change hosting providers.
Im a novice in Search engine optimization and i even now do study much more on internal linking. At this time, what i do to boost my website is simply generate as quite a few backlinks to your site as feasible.
Having a similar problem with them as well.
This is obviously a problem on that end.
Hi
I am also having this problem.
I was wondering if the problem would be fixed by changing my hosting and pointing my domain at the new servers on the new host or would the problem still persist?
My domain is registered with godaddy for 5 years and I do not want to re-register it with another registrar/ web hosting company as I would have to pay for the 5 years again.
Hi Simon,
I too think changing the host will definitely help in fixing this redirects. infact, I bought the static IP package from them as a result of which they moved my files to a new server and the problem has stopped now. So, moving files to a new hosts server will fix this. I think Godaddy is having this redirect problem in economic hosting packages which in turn affects the users rankings when hosted at these servers.
Hi
Thought it would be useful to let you know what godaddy said about the redirects after denying anything happening at first. This is the explanation for the issue I was given:
“The 302 redirects are filters setup to maintain the integrity of the hosting server while we investigate and resolve an issue. These filters are temporary and will be removed as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and appreciate your patience and understanding in this matter.”
This seems like rubbish to me because it has been constant for more than 8 days now.
Time to find a new host me thinks.
Hi Everyone, I have redirected some special offers pages to home page by 302 redirect. But now I am getting an error message on webmaster tool that” We recommend you that your sitemap contains URLs that point to the final destination(the redirect page” instead of redirecting to another URL”.
I want to know what really the problem is and how should I remove this problem..?
hi Deepak Julien,
I also had the same issue with one of my godaddy.com hosted website. I had another hosting account with hostgator so i immediately shifted to new hosting. now all my errors are gone. But there is an issue with my ranking.
After this issue my google ranking is severely affected for all keywords. I think i lost 90% traffic from google.
My question from Deepak Julien is:
how much of your google ranking was down by this issue and after clearing this issue how much of your ranking was recovered and in how much time?
thanks,
alia
Hi Alia, I got many pages from my website de-indexed from Google and it took a whole lot of re-submission efforts to get them show up on the results again. The rankings dropped for those pages.
Hello Guys,
I am also getting 302-302-200 header response intermittently. I reported this to GoDaddy one month back and they said they are not able to duplicate the issue and asked me to provide the steps. I checked the problem was not happening again. My Google SERP has been screwed due to this redirect 302-302-200 header response.
Today, after 1 month, it started happening again…
I agree with most of the people to change the hosting provider. Questions:
1. Which hosting provider is better than GoDaddy in similar price range. I checked on google, people are also facing this redirect 302 issue with Hostgator. I think this is how all hosting companies setup shared hosting. I cannot afford to have a dedicated hosting.
2. Is there any Apache server logs on Godaddy hosting that we can check to prove them that this problem is happening. Though I have provided them enough evidences sometime back but they did not help as they could not recreate the problem.
3. Why Godaddy is unable to fix this issue that is being faced by most of the users?
4. I have Joomla installed on GoDaddy. How can I take the backup of complete website (source files and database) to move to new hosting?
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks.
so what the conclusions from the above?
this is what godaddy support told me:
Adding a dedicated IP can help you avoid the problem, but it is not guaranteed. With shared hosting, many websites use the same IP address. You might require your own IP address if you want to access your website by both the IP address and the domain name. This is especially useful during periods of domain name propagation when you can’t access your site by using the domain name.
Thats True. A dedicated IP Address definitely solves the problem but it comes at an additional price.
I have the same problem.I think godaddy does this deliberately so that we would have no options left but to buy their SEO package! Godaddy Sucks. Thank you deepak! This article is really cool!
Hello Deepak,
You have mentioned something about nameserver files! I want to know what those files are and where I can find them! Please help!
Hi Ajay, Log in to your GoDaddy Account Manager. Next to Domains, click Launch. Select the domain name(s) you want to modify. From (Nameservers), select Set Nameservers.
i also had this problem…
only thing i got back from their tech support was standard “network protection” and “service integrity” response…
here’s my story…
http://blog.onedevteam.com/2012/01/why-to-avoid-godaddy-web-hosting.html