SEMrush Site Audit: Key pages returned 403 status code

I noticed on SEMrush that my site had a significant increase in errors—it went from 100 to almost 500 in a matter of days. Most of the errors were populated yesterday (03/18/2024). 68 pages are returning 403 errors, and this is causing hundreds of broken internal links across my site: https://selahcreativeco.com. However, my site is still accessible and the links seem to be working fine, so I'm not sure what's going on. I saw another Forum post about this error in Ahrefs, but no solution or conversation started. Traffic looks normal (for now) but is anyone else experiencing this or have advice on what to do? 

403 Forbidden (SEMrush definition):
Client does not have access rights to the content so server is rejecting to give proper response.

Three possibilities come to mind.

A failure on SEMrush's end and they are misreporting the issue.

A failure on Squarespace's end at the time SEMrush crawled your site.

Squarespace is blocking access by SEMrush to some pages of your site. HTTP 403.

@creedon I was wondering if it was a false alarm. So you don't suspect there's any action I need to take?

Hi @HaleyWard I am having this same 403 issue with one of my client's websites. Have you found a cause or a resolution? Some of my pages began displaying the issue in SemRush on the 4th of March, and then more pages developed the issue on March 18th -- the same date as yours. I am still looking into things on my end. 

@Amy_Faire_ No, not yet, but it seems to be getting worse. Now my errors are close to 700. I am seeing a notice that says "Your crawler settings have changed since your previous audit. This could affect your current audit results and the number of issues detected." so I'm going to look into what that means. I think I'll send a message to support as well and see if they have any insight on this issue.

Hello @HaleyWard and @Amy_Faire_

I have the same problem using SEMrush and using Ahrefs. I sent SquareSpace an email about it which them giving me (as usual) links to forums or online articles. However, what comes to mind is this - hopefully this one the explanation: 

SquareSpace usually blocks out IP of any sites that are requesting access multiple times (for safety and security purposes) and gave me something to do about the 403 for future crawls. : 

"Hello Aubrey,
 
Thanks for your reply, and I am glad to hear the issue usually resolves itself when refreshing. I do understand your concern and looking to prevent 403 errors from happening again in the future, however please note it's not possible to completely prevent such errors as this is a security measure triggered by high volume of requests.
 
While I can't speak for settings that can be adjusted within SEMRush, If you are encountering 403 errors yourself due to your IP address being blocked, there are some steps you can take here as noted in our guide when encountering 403 errors: https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206545697-Common-error-messages-in-Squarespace#toc-browser-and-security
 
As noted, after completing the first step by visiting the demo Squarespace site to complete a CAPTCHA and have the block on your IP address removed within six hours, this is not permanent. It's possible that this step may need to be repeated again in the future should the error be triggered again.
 
Hope this information helps. Feel free to reach out if you need additional assistance. We are always here to help." 

I haven't tried it but maybe this can help? 
 

Hi @Auvz, I just looked at my SEMrush account, and the errors resolved themselves. I'm back down to 100 minor errors. I didn't do anything to address it, so must be an uncontrollable glitch. I also didn't take a hit in traffic, which is relieving, so I doubt search rankings are affected.