Do I need a canonical tag on the 404 error page?
-
Per definition, a 404 is displayed for different url (any not existing url ...).
As I try to clean my website following SEOmoz pro advices, SEOmoz notify me of duplicate content on urls leading to a 404
This is I guess not that important, but just curious: should we add a cononical tag to the template returning the 404, with a canonical url such as www.mysite.com/404
?
-
You will see that in GWT. Go to GWT > Crawler Access > Remove URL. It'll de-index that 404.
-
Stephen is right; there's no need for that. It's a little odd it's telling you that, I would check that these URLs that are 404ing are returning a status code of 404.
-
no need for that ^^
I assume you no longer link to those 404 pages from your website? So on the next crawl SEOmoz wont pick up those 404s
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I use rel=canonical on similar product pages.
I'm thinking of using rel=canonical for similar products on my site. Say I'm selling pens and they are al very similar. I.e. a big pen in blue, a pack of 5 blue bic pens, a pack of 10, 50, 100 etc. should I rel=canonical them all to the best seller as its almost impossible to make the pages unique. (I realise the best I realise these should be attributes and not products but I'm sure you get my point) It seems sensible to have one master canonical page for bic pens on a site that has a great description video content and good images plus linked articles etc rather than loads of duplicate looking pages. love to hear thoughts from the Moz community.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird0 -
What are the best ways to fix 404 errors?
I recently changed the url of my main blog and now have about 100 404 errors. I did a redirect from the old url to the new one however still have errors. 1. Should I do a 301 redirect from each old blog post url to the new blog post url? 2. Should I just delete the old blog post (url) and rewrite the blog post? I"m not concerned about links to the old posts as a lot of them do not have many links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Why are Pages returning 404 errors not being dropped?
Our webmaster tools continues to return anywhere upwards of 750 pages that have 404 errors. These are from pages of a previous site no longer used. However this was over 1 year ago these pages were dropped along with the 301 re-directs. Why is Google not clearing these from webmaster tools but re-listing them again after 3 month cycle? Is it because external sites have links to these pages? If so should I put a 301 in place (most of these site are forums and potentially dodgy directories etc from previous poor link building programs) or ask for a manual removal?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Meta Refresh tag on cache pages- GRRR!
Hi guys, All of our product pages originate in a URL with a unique number but it redirects to an SEO url for the user. These product pages have blocks on the page and these blocks are automatically populated with our database of content. Here's an example of the redirect in place: www.example.com/45643/xxxx.html redirects to www.example.com/seo-friendly-url.html The development team did this for 2 reasons. 1) our internal search needs the unique numbered urls for search and 2) it allows quick redirects as pages are cached. The problem I face is this, the redirects from the cached are being tagged with 'meta refresh', yup, they are 302. The development team said they could stop caching and respond dynamically with a 301 but this would bring in a delay. Speed wise, the cached pages load within 22ms and dynamically 530ms, so yeah half a second more. Currently cached pages just do a meta refresh tagged redirect and I want to move away from this. What would you guys recommend in such a situation? I feel like unless I place a 301, I'll be losing out on rank juice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Links to images on a page diluting page value?
We have been doing some testing with additional images on a page. For example, the page here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/2550/sukhoi-su-27-flanker-package-for-fsx/ Notice the images under the heading Images/Screenshots After adding these images, we noticed a ranking drop for that page (-27 places) in the SERPS. Could the large amount of images - in particular the links on the images (links to the larger versions) be causing it to dilute the value of the actual page? Any suggestions, advice or opinions will be much appreciated.0 -
E Commerce product page canonical and indexing + URL parameters
Hi, I'm having some issues on the best way to handle site structure. The technical side of SEO isn't my strong point so I thought I'd ask the question before I make the decision. Two examples for you to look at. This is a new site http://www.tester.co.uk/electrical/multimeters/digital. By selecting another page to see more products you get this url string where/p/2. This page also has the canonical tag relating to this page and not the original page. Now if say for example I exclude this parameter (where) in webmaster tools will I be stopping Google indexing the products on the other pages where/p/2, 3, 4 etc. and the same if I make the canonical point to multimeters/digital/ instead of multimeters/digital/where/p/2 etc.? I have the same question applied to the older site http://www.pat-services.co.uk/digital-multimeters-26.html. which no longer has an canonical tags at all. The only real difference is Google is indexing http://www.pat-services.co.uk/digital-multimeters-26.html?page=2 but not http://www.tester.co.uk/electrical/multimeters/digital/where/p/2 Thanks for help in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PASSLtd0 -
Hash as a Replacement for Absolute URL in Canonical Tags?
Any idea why companies like Skechers would be doing this: http://screencast.com/t/ooEkATGN7EX ? I suppose it makes sense, but I've never seen it done before. If this works, why on earth would we be using absolute URLs still?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevewiideman0