url of deleted menu items listed on Redirects

[artax]

Hi everybody,
I recently learned about Redirects, enabled the plugin and started using it few days ago.
I am surprised to see among the expired URLs some old urls to menu items I deleted months ago when I
changed the structure of menus.
I'd like to understand: why the old url are still there? That doesn't seem they're called from some internet user, like someone trying to access the page from google; the referring page column doesn't say anything about it anyway (it's blank)

I'd appreciate any help in understanding why those old urls still show up as expired url in Redirects.

Many thanks

[pe7er]

Is the URL still available in Google?
You can find out by adding "site:" in front of the URL, like:
site:https://example.com/some/url/you/found/in/redirects

Are there still websites linking to that page?
You can find out by adding "link:" in front of the URL, like:
link:https://example.com/some/url/you/found/in/redirects

[sozzled]

I am surprised to see among the expired URLs some old URL to menu items I deleted months ago when I changed the structure of menus. I'd like to understand: why the old URL are still there?

Who knows? They could be coming from outdated seach engine results and, over time, they will disappear (when the search engine indexes are updated). They could be coming from old bookmarks that people may have stored in their browser.
As @pe7er wrote, they could be coming from other websites that backlinked your URLs from there.

You can use the Redirects component to point those old URLs to their new locations or you could ignore these things and let people get 404s. It's up to you what you do with these things.

You may also find interesting background reading in this discussion topic »»» viewtopic.php?f=714&t=958501

[artax]

Is the URL still available in Google?
You can find out by adding "site:" in front of the URL, like:
site:https://example.com/some/url/you/found/in/redirects

Are there still websites linking to that page?
You can find out by adding "link:" in front of the URL, like:
link:https://example.com/some/url/you/found/in/redirects

Thanks for your reply. I checked: no, those links are not on google anymore.
I tried as you suggested to check any backlink, I didn't get this info but I am pretty sure they got no backlinks whatsoever and those 404 are not due to any actual "real" traffic. I wish I have so many backlinks.

Who knows? They could be coming from outdated seach engine results and, over time, they will disappear (when the search engine indexes are updated). They could be coming from old bookmarks that people may have stored in their browser.
As @pe7er wrote, they could be coming from other websites that backlinked your URLs from there.

You can use the Redirects component to point those old URLs to their new locations or you could ignore these things and let people get 404s. It's up to you what you do with these things.

You may also find interesting background reading in this discussion topic »»» viewtopic.php?f=714&t=958501

Thanks for your reply. Well, it doesn't really look real traffic, but rather a list of old (deleted) menu items or urls leading to them, still stored somewhere and triggering somehow the warning. It looks a list of menu items from my previous menu, they're even shown in the order they used to be within the menu.

I did read your post, thanks: yes, I got the same thing too, hacking attempts.

[sozzled]

Well, it doesn't really look real traffic, but rather a list of old (deleted) menu items or URLs leading to them, still stored somewhere ...

I could not tell you if these 404s are from genuine traffic or they're leftovers from something else. What you can do, however, is look at the dates when these attempts were made to access outdated menu items.

You wrote that you reorganised your menu items some time ago, right? I don't know when you did your reorganising but I would give it time. The Redirects component simply lists a record of attempts to access non-existent URLs. What you see in the Redirects component are not there by chance or "stored somewhere". Someone (or something) made attempts to reach non-existent URLs.

As I wrote earlier, I could not tell you where these things come from. They could come from other content on your website, someone else's website, someone's browser bookmarks, someone sniffing around ... who knows? What you can do is to trash the records listed in the Redirects component and have a look again in a few hours, or a few days, to see if anything new has been added. I always look at the Redirects component when I'm doing website maintenance and I'm always discovering all kinds of attempts by people/'bots to see what they can find.

[artax]

You wrote that you reorganised your menu items some time ago, right? I don't know when you did your reorganising but I would give it time. The Redirects component simply lists a record of attempts to access non-existent URLs. What you see in the Redirects component are not there by chance or "stored somewhere". Someone (or something) made attempts to reach non-existent URLs.

As I wrote earlier, I could not tell you where these things come from. They could come from other content on your website, someone else's website, someone's browser bookmarks, someone sniffing around ... who knows?

Thanks for your reply.
Well, I reorganised the menu months ago, and those old links are not on google anymore.
I got those records almost as soon as I activated the plugin: first time I checked Redirects, the list was empty. Same day later on, got that list and all the 404 hits tells "1".

I am thinking whether I have some links somewhere within the trashed or unpublished content still linking to those old url, but can't find anything like that yet.

A bit OT but still relevant I believe: google occasionally ranks and bring to my attention what I call "frankestein pages" involving old tags I did remove a long time ago, where old and long deleted tags are still used for collecting random articles/k2 items: what puzzles me is that those pages are not 404, but still accessible. How could pages be made by a tag I no longer have?

I am puzzled.

[sozzled]

I am thinking whether I have some links somewhere within the trashed or unpublished content still linking to those old URLs but can't find anything like that yet.

As I wrote earlier ...

[The Redirects plugin collects 404s and] the Redirects component is a list of whatever the plugin has collected. So, until someone clicks a link that doesn't exist, there's nothing for the plugin to do. In other words, someone (or something) has to target a URL that doesn't exist; that's how it works.

I don't know how a trashed menu item could be targeted by someone or something (unless someone or something "guessed" the URL, perhaps). By the same token, even if you have unpublished content, how could someone access that content, find an old link, and click that link thereby generating a 404?

What you could do is to trash everything in the Redirects component (and purge the trash). Wait a little while and see if there are new records created by the Redirects plugin that are listed in the component. As I keep saying: the Redirects plugin only does something when someone clicks something that generates a 404. The Redirects component is just a summary of those 404s, that's all.

As far as tags are concerned (and therefore "pages" created by a menu item that uses a view of the Tags component), check 'em again.