I’m working on a post on nofollows and created a couple of pages to test the concepts (therefore if you ever link to one page, could you link to both :), alternatively just link to this post and let the user click through.)
So you have example 1 and example 2.
On the left hand side of the page I have 10 items from an RSS feed and I initially used a feed from my Top 100 vBulletin site. However it threw 403 server errors so I added a test using DigitalPoint’s feed. No problems there. I’ve since added a number of other feeds that have been either reliably good or bad.
I initially thought the problem lay with the Top 10 feed but I’ve been able to use it at other locations on other servers without problems. The feed validates and if you use one of the many “check server headers” tools it returns 200 (OK).
In the meantime I contacted Maxnet who host this blog and got this response (eventually)
Hi Sarah
Thank you for your email.
Ive discussed this with our Systems Admin and he advised that it looks like http://www.top100vbulletin.com/aggregator.php?switch=1. is denying access from our webserver. From what we see its a coding issue on your site. A deeper analysis will cost $120 per hour to investigate.
I don’t think so guys, I’ll just have to live with the errors.
The situation doesn’t really impact on my test and trial, but it’s interesting. Neither host can see the reason for the problem, but the servers won’t play ball.
I’ve created a feedburner feed for the Top 10 feed and it’s accepted no problem. I must try and check out if the server I’m on has been blacklisted or something. Totally wierd.