How do you find the source of a 404
-
I've recently noticed quite a sharp rise in the number of 404 errors on our site. Unsurprising really as we have just had a major upgrade of our site navigation. When looking in GA at the landing page stats the vast majority of them are from Google organic search. How do I find the source of the 404?
All help appreciated.
Thanks.
Jon
-
Try Open site explorer and "link opportunities" for any pages that are 404 and have external links. Webmaster tools will also show you pages that are 404 that have external links (though it doesn't show you the links) and Ahrefs has a similar tool
-
But that are only the internal sources...? Not?
-
For the quickness/effectiveness it would be, these in order:
1. Xenu
2. Screaming Frog
3. 404 Redirected Plugin (if you are using Wordpress)
Also once done also check with Google Webmaster tools and Moz tools to see if you caught all of them, this also takes a bit longer to update, thats why I listed it here, but you can also start with theses as well. If these campaigns/profiles are setup.
-
The Moz crawl will also identify 404s for you, and when you download the CSV, you can see the source of the 404.
-
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk- is a great bit of software or Xenu
They are free and can tell you 404 etc. on your page and you can 301 from there.
-
Make sure you have google webmaster tools installed. On your dashboard, it will tell you if there are any crawl errors, click here to see where they are. Click on each link and it will give you the location of the URL and which pages are linking to it.
A quick solution would be to create 301 redirects for each page in your htaccess. However, it may be better in the long term to find all the pages linking to the missing pages and re-write them.
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
-
I have a lot of spammy links coming to my 404 page (the URLs have been removed now). Should i re-direct to Home?
I have a lot of spammy links pointing at my website according to MOZ. Thankfully all of them were for some URLs that we've long since removed so they're hitting my 404. Should i change the 404 with a 301 and Re-Direct that Juice to my home page or some other page or will that hurt my ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jagdecat0 -
Is a 404, then a meta refresh 301 to the home page OK for SEO?
Hi Mozzers I have a client that had a lot of soft 404s that we wanted to tidy up. Basically everything was going to the homepage. I recommended they implement proper 404s with a custom 404 page, and 301 any that really should be redirected to another page. What they have actually done is implemented a 404 (without the custom 404 page) and then after a short delay 301 redirected to the homepage. I understand why they want to do this as they don't want to lose the traffic, but is this a problem with SEO and the index? Or will Google treat as a hard 404 anyway? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy0 -
404 in Google cache for one of my blog posts
Hey Moz People, I'm getting a 404 when I cache: this blog post http://www.inscopix.com/blog/decoding-brain-initiative and I'm not able to see what's causing it. Can someone take a look and let me know if they see anything standing out? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jacobfy0 -
How to properly 404 pages from a subdomain
SO I am working on a site that had a subdomain that attracted a lot of spammy links. I researched the backlinks to this subdomain, and there were no beneficial links at all. I am thinking the best thing is to 404 this subdomain. What is the best way to do this? Should I just edit the DNS settings so that this subdomain does not point to the root domain? Or is there something that should be done in webmaster tools? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evan890 -
Keyword Spy Source?
We've got a few backlinks from Keyword Spy and Keyword Spy Pro. I'm pretty sure of the answer but I'll ask it anyway. Is there any way to determine who's doing the snooping? Are there any signals to look for while clicking back through the link "crumbs" that might tell me something of interest or value?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads0 -
How to prevent 404's from a job board ?
I have a new client with a job listing board on their site. I am getting a bunch of 404 errors as they delete the filled jobs. Question: Should we leave the the jobs pages up for extra content and entry points to the site and put a notice like this job has been filled, please search our other job listings ? Or should I no index - no follow these pages ? Or any other suggestions - it is an employment agency site. Overall what would be the best practice going forward - we are looking at probably 20 jobs / pages per month.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
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 ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nuxeo0 -
How to find pages hardest hit
I have been hearing that panda can penalize a website for low quality pages. I have run duplicate content check and done my best to go through the whole website. I hear many people talking about deleting hardest hit pages, or fixing hardest hit pages. My question is how can I find which pages on our website are hardest hit? Is there anyway to check a website for pages that might score low. We do have a ecom section to the website which I am concerned might be considered low quality for each product page. Any advice would be a great help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fertilityhealth0