Increase in Not Found Errors in Webmaster Tools

Was this on sites where the WordPress core was installed in a subdirectory?

We just had a release today which includes an improvement for this URL for subdirectory installations, which should fix it, if so.

If it is still happening after Wordfence is updated on these sites, let us know.

If you don’t use Wordfence’s Live Traffic view, you can turn off live traffic entirely on the Options page, or at the top of the Live Traffic view, to remove this URL from the site, too. (The original problem was due to a change in the way Google treats scripts when indexing.)

No, the WordPress core is not installed in a subdirectory. But I will try turning off the Live Traffic. I will let you know in a couple days if this fix resolved the issue.

Ok, that is very unusual, then. It could also be that the host is using mod_security, and blocking certain URLs or patterns. If you’re familiar with the Network tab in Chrome or Firefox’s developer tools, you should be able to see 404’s for those URLs when visiting the site yourself (when Live Traffic is on) if they are always being blocked, or if there is an issue specific to your site’s setup. If they work for you, but Google still reports errors, there may be an issue with the host’s mod_security rules.

If you don’t need Live Traffic, though, disabling it should fix the issue, whether the host is blocking something or not.