Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do search engines crawl links on 404 pages?
-
I'm currently in the process of redesigning my site's 404 page. I know there's all sorts of best practices from UX standpoint but what about search engines? Since these pages are roadblocks in the crawl process, I was wondering if there's a way to help the search engine continue its crawl.
Does putting links to "recent posts" or something along those lines allow the bot to continue on its way or does the crawl stop at that point because the 404 HTTP status code is thrown in the header response?
-
Okay, thanks Alan!
-
Hi Brad
Sorry I have only just come back to you - it was late night here in the UK, but it looks like Alan has already answered your question
Have you tested your 404 page with fetch as Google in webmaster tools - you should see that it can see the links on your 404 page and as such will continue crawling them as Alan has said.
So what is a benefit to a user will also be a benefit to Google crawling your site in my opinion
-
Sorry, yes, it should crawl the links - they used to do that.
But you can prove it to yourself, by doing what I said - and then report back.
-
Yes it will continue crawling or yes it will stop the crawl?
-
Yes and you can test it by creating a page that is linked from nowhere else and then check your logs or analytics
-
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the reply. I'm aware of all the best practice stuff but thanks for sending through. It didn't quite answer my question so let me rephrase...
Will a bot follow a hyperlink (like the example below) on a 404 page or will it stop the crawl on that page (not on the whole site) because the header response code is a 404?
-
Hi Brad
Firstly it is great from a usability point of view to have a custom 404 page and I would link it to your most popular content and maybe add a search feature on the page for your site to help find the content that is missing. I have come across some nice 404s that actually have very concise sitemap in order to help the visitor navigate the site.In order to prevent Google from indexing your 404 page you need to make sure it returns an actuall 404 HTTP status code.
In order to understand how Goolgebot crawls your site I would look at the following post from Google themselves - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182072?hl=en
Rather than being concerned about a 404 page having links on to keep the crawl going make sure you have an XML sitemap that you have submitted to Google via Webmaster Tools as this will help your crawl process.
Googlebot alots a set amount of time to crawling your site and it doesn't just stop crawling because it encounters a 404 error. However make sure that you monitor Google Webmaster Tools and take care of any reported 404s with 301 redirects for instance if the page has changed location. You will notice that Googlebot reports 404 erros on the days it finds them and these can often be multiple 404 errors encountered in one visit to your site by Googlebot. Keeing an eye on this and making sure you keep it updated will make your site as crawl efficient as possible which is clearly what you are after - as we all are
I thought this would also be interesting reading in relation to this - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html
Hope this helps
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
-
Thousands of 503 errors in GSC for pages not important to organic search - Is this a problem?
Hi, folks A client of mine now has roughly 30 000 503-errors (found in the crawl error section of GSC). This is mostly pages with limited offers and deals. The 503 error seems to occur when the offers expire, and when the page is of no use anymore. These pages are not important for organic search, but gets traffic from direct and newsletters, mostly. My question:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
Does having a high number of 503 pages reported in GSC constitute a problem in terms of organic ranking for the domain and the category and product pages (the pages that I want to rank for organically)? If it does, what is the best course of action to mitigate the problem? Looking excitingly forward to your answers to this 🙂 Sigurd0 -
Too many on page links
Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Is it a problem to use a 301 redirect to a 404 error page, instead of serving directly a 404 page?
We are building URLs dynamically with apache rewrite.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
When we detect that an URL is matching some valid patterns, we serve a script which then may detect that the combination of parameters in the URL does not exist. If this happens we produce a 301 redirect to another URL which serves a 404 error page, So my doubt is the following: Do I have to worry about not serving directly an 404, but redirecting (301) to a 404 page? Will this lead to the erroneous original URL staying longer in the google index than if I would serve directly a 404? Some context. It is a site with about 200.000 web pages and we have currently 90.000 404 errors reported in webmaster tools (even though only 600 detected last month).0 -
Redirect Search Results to Category Pages
I am planning redirect the search results to it's matching category page to avoid having two indexed pages of essentially the same content. Example http://www.example.com/search/?kw=sunglasses
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WizardOfMoz
wil be redirected to
http://www.example.com/category/sunglasses/ Is this a good idea? What are the possible negative effect if I go this route? Thanks.0 -
Links from non-indexed pages
Whilst looking for link opportunities, I have noticed that the website has a few profiles from suppliers or accredited organisations. However, a search form is required to access these pages and when I type cache:"webpage.com" the page is showing up as non-indexed. These are good websites, not spammy directory sites, but is it worth trying to get Google to index the pages? If so, what is the best method to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxweb0 -
Do 404 Pages from Broken Links Still Pass Link Equity?
Hi everyone, I've searched the Q&A section, and also Google, for about the past hour and couldn't find a clear answer on this. When inbound links point to a page that no longer exists, thus producing a 404 Error Page, is link equity/domain authority lost? We are migrating a large eCommerce website and have hundreds of pages with little to no traffic that have legacy 301 redirects pointing to their URLs. I'm trying to decide how necessary it is to keep these redirects. I'm not concerned about the page authority of the pages with little traffic...I'm concerned about overall domain authority of the site since that certainly plays a role in how the site ranks overall in Google (especially pages with no links pointing to them...perfect example is Amazon...thousands of pages with no external links that rank #1 in Google for their product name). Anyone have a clear answer? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?
Hello, I have four outbound links from my site home page taking users to join us on our social Network pages (Twitter, FB, YT and Google+). if you look at my site home page, you can find those 4 links as 4 large buttons on the right column of the page: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ Here is my question: do you think it is better for me to add the rel="nofollow" directive to those 4 links or allow Google to follow? From a PR prospective, I am sure that would be better to apply the nofollow tag, but I would like Google to understand that we have a presence on those 4 social channels and to make clearly a correlation between our official website and our official social channels (and then to let Google understand that our social channels are legitimate and related to us), but I am afraid the nofollow directive could prevent that. What's the best move in this case? What do you suggest to do? Maybe the nofollow is irrelevant to allow Google to correlate our website to our legitimate social channels, but I am not sure about that. Any suggestions are very welcome. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau9 -
Generating 404 Errors but the Pages Exist
Hey I have recently come across an issue with several of a sites urls being seen as a 404 by bots such as Xenu, SEOMoz, Google Web Tools etc. The funny thing is, the pages exist and display fine. This happens on many of the pages which use the Modx CMS, but the index is fine. The wordpress blog in /blog/ all works fine. The only thing I can think of is that I have a conflict in the htaccess, but troubleshooting this is difficult, any tool I have found online seem useless. Have tried to rollback to previous versions but still does not work. Anyone had any experience of similar issues? Many thanks K.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Found0