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We are building a local business classified website which has about 6000 unique listingsunder huge number of categories and sub-categories.

For each listing there is a details page in which we have included a link from where the users can download pdf containing all the details and information regarding that particular listing.

When the users click that button/link for download request. the pdf file is downloaded in the same page without opening a download link in the new tab.

What we saw on webmaster shooked us. the server is returning a 503 server error pointing all the pdf links of each listings. You can find the attached image of the crawl errors in our webmaster dashboard.

Help us in resolving this issue..

Looking forward for you help. enter image description here

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  • It's not a 404. It's a 503. If you go to these URL, what's the server status you get? How many redirections are done from the link on the webpage to the final resource on the server? If you don't know how to check this, download a browser extension like Redirect Path. Did you use some sort of plugin for maintenance page in the past?
    – lucgenti
    Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 7:48
  • There are not urls, and doesn't have any page. If the user clicks this link then a pdf will be downloaded with al of the details and information of particular listing
    – satish k
    Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 8:18
  • If I click on a link, it means I'm on a page. And a link is a URL to a resource on a server. Anyway: check the response code status with some extension like the one I said. Click on a link for downloading a pdf, then check the status response.
    – lucgenti
    Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 9:11
  • when i click the pdf link , actually the url was remaining same and i am able to download pdf files on the same page..
    – satish k
    Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 9:26
  • Now I understand. You're forcing download. Is it necessary that Google crawls these pdfs? Urls aren't even user friendly. Usually it is supposed to block GoogleBot to access similar resources.
    – lucgenti
    Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 9:42

1 Answer 1

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Usually it is supposed to block GoogleBot if you don't want it to crawl.

You can simply do it by editing your robots.txt and blocking access to the pdf folder. For example:

User-agent: *
Disallow: listings/index/getpdf/*

If you want Google to access and index it, you should let him see your files without redirecting it or asking for download. You can do it through .htaccess.

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  • Thanks would you like to vote my question ?
    – satish k
    Commented Jun 6, 2015 at 9:58

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