Google Webmaster Tools suddenly shows 1379 crawl errors

Question

Just checking GWT today and it's suddenly showing 1,379 crawl errors (404) but for the most non-sensical URL's that don't exist, for example...

www.example.com/services/newsletters/services/contact

The only changes I've made recently have been setting the preferred domain to 'www' and updating the .htaccess file to redirect to 'www' as Google was showing some results with 'www' and some without.

This is my .htaccess file

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On

    # Trailing slash enforcement

    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1/ [L,R=301]

    # Returns WWW

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com
    RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] 

    # Removes index.php

    RewriteCond $1 !\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]

    #Redirects old static .html pages to EE CMS

    Redirect 301 /services.html /services 
    Redirect 301 /take-away.html /services/take-away
    Redirect 301 /blog.html /blog
    Redirect 301 /about.html /about
    Redirect 301 /pin-up-studio.html /pin-up-studio
    Redirect 301 /press.html /press
    Redirect 301 /links.html /links
    Redirect 301 /newsletter.html /newsletter
    Redirect 301 /events.html /events
    Redirect 301 /contact.html /contact
    Redirect 301 /terms-and-conditions.html /terms-and-conditions
    Redirect 301 /parties.html /services/party-package
    Redirect 301 /gallery.html /gallery
    Redirect 301 /bridal.html /services/bridal-styling
    Redirect 301 /404.html /404

</IfModule>

Any ideas what I'd done wrong?

EDIT

So another 379 crawl errors have appeared in the last day. When I check the 'linked from' status it says it is being linked from the website itelf. An example is this URL is not found...

http://www.example.com/services/contact.html/bridal-styling/bridal-styling/services/party-package/take-away/contact/pop-up-parlour/bridal-styling 

...and lists these 2 URL's as the 'linked from'

http://example.com/services/contact.html/bridal-styling/bridal-styling/services/party-package/take-away/contact/pop-up-parlour

http://www.example.com/services/contact.html/bridal-styling/bridal-styling/services/party-package/take-away/contact/pop-up-parlour/

As I said before the only changes I've made recently have been setting the preferred domain to 'www' and updating the .htaccess file to redirect to 'www' as Google was showing some results with 'www' and some without.

My .htaccess file is as above.

It seems the bots seem to have got stuck in a loop when crawling the site? Not sure why it's getting hung up on the www and non www as I've specifically stated in GWT to use www.

Answer 1

Click each of the URLs listed in turn, and check the "Linked from" tab, it will tell you how Google found those URLs.

It's likely to be a bad link from another site. I've had problems with spammy link directories/search engines listing truncated URLs that don't exist, e.g. http://example.com/pag...