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Level 2
July 20, 2023
Question

404s on Emails

  • July 20, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1220 views

Hello everyone,

 

We have been experiencing 404s on URLs added to our Marketo emails for a while.

The issue is not with all the urls, it just happens randomly.

If we change the url and try to open it another browser then the link works.

 

This is an example of a link that doesn't work: 

visit.company.com/OTQ1LUNYRC0wNjIAAAGNDJ5NgrAXyub4LVHxPikNibAHxgxrr_vPFdA_NvusCXBklPxJWmXYNMrTA5aDEqntV_f9HW4=

 

Has anyone experience anything like this?

 

Cheers,

Pepe

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1 reply

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
July 20, 2023

Change the URL in what way? The click tracking IDs aren't something you can just guess.

Also please don't use somebody else's domain in your examples. You may use example.com, which is standardized for this purpose.

JoseSe6Author
Level 2
July 21, 2023

Thanks for the reply.

 

I didn't mean to say change sorry, my bad.

What I meant is that if we open the link that is giving us a 404 in a different browser, the link works

The url is not real, I used company.com instead of example.com

 

 

SanfordWhiteman
Level 10
July 21, 2023

I didn't mean to say change sorry, my bad.

What I meant is that if we open the link that is giving us a 404 in a different browser, the link works

The url is not real, I used company.com instead of example.com


But company.com is somebody else’s domain. It’s not a placeholder. You should use example.com, both to avoid confusion and to avoid inadvertently sending people to that domain.

 

The behavior you’re describing is consistent with the negative response being cached in the first browser. (Note it’s not actually an HTTP 404, it’s an HTTP 200 with an internal error message that looks like a 404.) But this response should not be cacheable, per its explicit cache-control HTTP header. I think you should supply an actual link that gave a 404 so we can inspect the response.