4

A joomla site without sef url is showing %5C%22 between most of the url as per webmaster. Due to this the webmaster showing duplicate url

Duplicate url as showin in webmaster

  http://www.xyz.com/%5C%22/index.php?option=com_newcar&view=price&Itemid=2
  http://www.xyz.com/%5C%22/index.php?option=com_newcar&view=details&Itemid=2&id=41&vid=39

When clicked on them, url turns out to be :-

  http://www.xyz.com/%5C"/index.php?option=com_newcar&view=price&Itemid=2
  http://www.xyz.com/%5C"/index.php?option=com_newcar&view=details&Itemid=2&id=41&vid=39

Have tried several htaccess combinations

   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*/%5C%22.*$
   RewriteRule .*  index.php     [R=301,L]

   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*/%5C".*$
   RewriteRule .*  index.php     [R=301,L]

But unable to remove it

The correct urls are

  http://www.xyz.com/index.php?option=com_newcar&view=price&Itemid=2
  http://www.xyz.com/index.php?option=com_newcar&view=details&Itemid=2&id=41&vid=39

any suggestions

Ruchika
  • 503
  • 1
  • 8
  • 26

1 Answers1

4

%5c represents a \ character. Since you are seeing %5c%22 that is the equivalent of \" which is the way that a " would be escaped in a php program if it occurred within a string quoted with double quotes. I suspect that whatever is creating the urls has an incorrectly escaped character (maybe the string is quoted with single quotes). You need to track down where the php error is and when fixed, this problem should go away.

Captain Payalytic
  • 1,061
  • 8
  • 9
  • thnx, i have checked on the pages, there are no php errors. However - what have observed is that due to bad linking by other sites - this error can come as google will continue crawling other urls in the same pattern. is there any way out through htaccess for ignoring these parameters of %5c" – Ruchika Apr 16 '13 at 11:33
  • How do you know that there is not an error in the php? This looks very much like someone has incorrectly escaped a value within the wrong sort of delimited string. And what do you mean by "I have checked the pages"? php code is in php files. A php file is not a "page" a single php file can be responsible for many "pages" and it may take many php files to create a single page. – Captain Payalytic Apr 16 '13 at 11:48
  • 1
    I found this question after seeing 1000s of 404s in my logs with exactly this. It turned out to be entirely from `Flamingo_SearchEngine (+http://www.flamingosearch.com/bot)`. Edit: just wanted to put this here so future generations of readers don't pull their hair out trying to find poorly escaped strings, it may be a misbehaving bot. – Josh Rumbut Sep 21 '15 at 18:48