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Troubleshooting Tip: Web Page blocked with 'An error occurred while trying to rate the web site using the webfiltering service'

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
March 18, 2012
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Description

This article describes an error that may occur while trying to rate a particular web filtering service, resulting in the user seeing a 'Web Page Blocked' message when accessing the internet.

'An error occurred while trying to rate the website using the web filtering in FortiGate' indicates that the FortiGate firewall is unable to determine the category of a website using the FortiGuard web filtering service. This can lead to the website being blocked, even if it is not inherently malicious.

This may be caused by:

An issue about the rating of the FortiGuard Web Filtering feature.
The expiration of the Web Filtering license.
Inability to reach the FortiGuard server for web filtering rating.

To confirm FortiGuard servers are reachable, try to ping the following hostnames:

execute ping service.fortiguard.net

execute ping update.fortiguard.net

execute ping guard.fortinet.net

execute ping securewf.fortiguard.net [ for HTTPS service ]

If the hostname is not resolving or ping is not working, refer to this KB article: Troubleshooting Tip: Unable to connect to FortiGuard servers.

Failed to respond.PNG

Scope

FortiGate.

Solution

This will enable users to access websites even when a rating error occurs, allowing the FortiGate unit to utilize the FortiGuard Web Filtering database stored on the unit to rate the website.

This is applicable even if the FortiGuard Web Filtering license has expired, but it will not allow access to the latest update from the FortiGuard service.

Scenario 1:
Go to Security Profiles -> Web Filter, select the Profile to use, and under 'Rating Options' enable 'Allow Websites When a Rating Error Occurs'.

In the new versions (7.2 and 7.4+), the configuration will appear like this:

In CLI:

Screenshot 2025-09-18 083747.png

From v7.4 and above, the option for changing the 'Allow website when rating error occurs' has changed. The following option, shown in the screenshot below, needs to be disabled or enabled to either enable or disable the option for rating error.

Scenario 2:

When checking the 'diagnose debug rating', two servers were seen:

image (1).png

If the servers show 'F' under Flags, this indicates that the server has not responded and is considered to have failed.

To resolve, the FortiGuard settings can be adjusted to the following:

config system fortiguard

set fortiguard-anycast disable

set protocol udp

set port 8888

set sdns-server-ip 208.91.112.220 173.243.140.53 210.7.96.53

end

At this point, if the issue persists, after clearing the browser cache and trying from different browsers, then a last resort is to restart the web-filter service using the command below:

diagnose test application urlfilter 99

For the detailed 'diagnose debug rating' flags description, refer to this article: Troubleshooting Tip: Resolving FDS Communication Issues (FortiGuard Distribution Servers).