Page Returns 403 Forbidden but Only From Google Search Link

I run a website http://sciantechnologies.com/.

Now, if you go to that URL, it loads fine, however if you google search “Scian Technologies”, it will return a link that looks like this:

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http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsciantechnologies.com%2F&ei=3AY8UdLvF8Gi2gXxXg&usg=AFQjCNGT916DDNRiBhq31Qu6fz0-_GDOFg&sig2=iHtZm7pPyQGdcyZczOUMRg&bvm=bv.43287494,d.b2I

Which if you click on it, will redirect you to the correct URL, but for some reason it seems to pick up a 403 along the way. Funny thing is it leaves the correct URL in the address bar, and if you click on that and press enter, it works fine.

I didn’t set up anything special here – it’s just a wordpress site… anyone else had this behavior or have any ideas? I’m really scratching my head over it – it doesn’t seem to make any sense!

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2 comments

  1. Google has indexed your base domain (not including www).

    You’ll want to put a 301 redirect to your www subdomain.

    Then wait for Google to reindex your site.

  2. For those of you who use a web provider for hosting and hit this issue, I have managed to fix this. The support team were completely useless. Anyway, I fixed this by deleting my virtual host in the gui panel (which the support team actually advised me against) and recreated it. I never saw their virtual hosts config (they refused to show it to me) but I’m guessing when I installed wp using their magical installer script, it made changes to the virtual host configuration (most likely mod rewrite related) which I had no visibility of. Deleting the virtual domain then wiped this and started cleanly again. Note if you’re doing this:

    1. Delete the virtual domain and let it kick in (I.e. take your website down) before recreating it
    2. There is no guarantee that deleting the virtual domain will actually wipe this configuration. It may just unlink it server side.

    Hope this helps someone!