I've started seeing more and more 404 errors in Google Webmaster Tools, now to the point of having thousands of them in the following format, one for every post, page, etc., URL:

http://www.domain.com/category/post title/%3C?php%20the_permalink()%20?%3E

I'm not sure what's adding %3C?php%20the_permalink()%20?%3E to the URLs, but it's causing a huge # of 404 errors for me because Google is trying to spider them, and since it isn't a logged in user, it's causing a 404. Here's a list of the other plugins on my blog. All are at the current versions:

Akismet
All in One SEO Pack
CommentLuv
FeedBurner FeedSmith
Google XML Sitemaps
Hello Dolly (Deactivated)
JPF Link Pages
Ozh' Better Feed
OZh' Who Sees Ads
Popular Posts
Post-Plugin Library
Random Redirect
Similar Posts
Subscribe to Comments
W3 Total Cache
WP-Optimize (Disabled)
WP-PageNavi
WP-Polls
WP-PostViews
WP Contact Form III

I'm stumped. What could be appending %3C?php%20the_permalink()%20?%3E to each URL and causing the 404s (for non-logged in users like Googlebot)? The standard URLs still work, so the blog is functioning, but the increased 404s is worrisome in that it may begin to impact the performance of my server and perhaps eventually SEO.

Please PM or email me if you think you can help but would charge a fee. Thank you,
Chad

And do we get a URI to actually do some testing??

Originally Posted by chrishirst

And do we get a URI to actually do some testing??

Right, that would help. It's http://www.makeupandbeautyblog.com

Couldn't actually find the problem on the site but it is caused by a missing quote mark (") in a link after the href attribute this means that the rest of the line will be included as part of the URI until another quote mark is encountered.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Couldn't actually find the problem on the site but it is caused by a missing quote mark (") in a link after the href attribute this means that the rest of the line will be included as part of the URI until another quote mark is encountered.

Much appreciated for the clue. I've looked but haven't been able to find it either.

Here's what's likely a stupid question, but if Google Webmaster Tools is indicating all of these 404 errors to aliases of each permalink with 'the php the_permalink' excerpt appended at the end of each one, those faulty URLs would also be visible when viewing the page source, right? What I mean to say is, if Googlebot sees the URLs and is trying to follow them, shouldn't regular visitors be able to see them when viewing the page source in a browser?