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.
Images Returning 404 Error Codes. 301 Redirects?
-
We're working with a site that has gone through a lot of changes over the years - ownership, complete site redesigns, different platforms, etc. - and we are finding that there are both a lot of pages and individual images that are returning 404 error codes in the Moz crawls. We're doing 301 redirects for the pages, but what would the best course of action be for the images? The images obviously don't exist on the site anymore and are therefore returning the 404 error codes.
Should we do a 301 redirect to another similar image that is on the site now or redirect the images to an actual page? Or is there another solution that I'm not considering (besides doing nothing)?
We'll go through the site to make sure that there aren't any pages within the site that are still linking to those images, which is probably where the 404 errors are coming from. Based on feedback below it sounds like once we do that, leaving them alone is a good option.
-
Hi Garrett,
It really depends on the nature and use of the image. I'd really take that on a case by case basis. If you created unique images that received a ton of links or social shares, or they provided something important to your end users, than sure, recreating them on the same URLs might be a great idea. You might want to spot check a few in AHrefs, OSE and Google ANalytics to see if they were generating buzz, traffic, links or all three. Choose some likely candidates and find out what you see in those tools and let that guide how you proceed. Cheers,
Dana
-
Dana - thanks for the response! That is very helpful. We're going through the site now to make sure that none of the site's pages are still linking to or calling those deleted images, so I'm sure that will help as well.
Do you think it is worth replacing any of those images with another image that has the exact same URL, or just deleting the links and html for them if/when we do find references to them on the site?
-
If the images are no longer on the site it's perfectly acceptable to let them 404. Those 404s aren't going to hurt you. They should eventually drop out of Google's Index, although GWT can have a very long memory and hold on to 404 errors for what seems like forever.
If you think there is value for your end user in redirecting to a relevant image on the current site, that's fine too. I just wouldn't let your motivation be fear that 404 errors are somehow hurting you. If the 404s are resulting because the content has been removed, this is a perfectly acceptable reason to have a 404.
Hope that helps!
Dana
-
Can you let me take a look at it? Feel free to private message me.
Thanks,
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
-
404 Errors flaring on nonexistent or unpublished pages – should we be concerned for SEO?
Hello! We keep getting "critical crawler" notifications on Moz because of firing 404 codes. We've checked each page and know that we are not linking to them anywhere on our site, they are not published and they are not indexed on Google. It's only happened since we migrated our blog to Hubspot so we think it has something to do with the test pages their developers had set up and that they are just lingering in our code somewhere. However, we are still concerned having these codes fire implies negative consequences for our SEO. Is this the case? Should we be concerned about these 404 codes despite the pages from those URLs not actually existing? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DebFF
Chloe0 -
301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain
We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain. We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
301 redirects Ruby on Rails
Can anyone point me to the best way to implement 301 redirects on a Ruby on Rails website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brianvest0 -
Not found errors (404) due to being hacked
Hi Moz Guru's Our website was hacked a few months ago, since then we have taken various measures, last one being redesigning the website all together and removing it from a WordPress platform. So far all is going well, except that the 404 not found errors keeps coming up in Google Webmaster tools. The URLs are spam pages that were created by the virus. And these spam pages have been indexed by Google, and now we are struggling to get rid of them. Is there any way we can deal with these 404 spam pages links? Is marking all of them as fixed in the webmaster tools - search console- crawl errors helpful in any way? Can this have a negative impact on the SEO ? Looking forward to your answers. Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa0 -
404 Errors with my RSS Feed/sitemap
In my google webmasters I just started getting 404 errors that I'm not sure how to redirect. I'm getting quite a few that are ending in /feed/ for instance /nyc-accident-injury/feed/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jsmythd
contact-us-thank-you/feed/ and then also a problem with my sitemap I guess? With /site-map/?postsort=tags The domain is pulversthompson.com0 -
Is it safe to 301 redirect old domain to new domain after a manual unnatural links penalty?
I have recently taken on a client that has been manually penalised for spammy link building by two previous SEOs. Having just read this excellent discussion, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience I am weighing up the odds of whether it's better to cut losses and recommend moving domains. I had thought under these circumstances it was important not to 301 the old domain to the new domain but the author (Lewis Sellers) comments on 3/4/13 that he is aware of forwards having been implemented without transferring the penalty to the new domain. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lifting-a-manual-penalty-given-by-google-personal-experience#jtc216689 Is it safe to 301? What's the latest thinking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ewan.Kennedy0 -
Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search
Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos. When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed. The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such: domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results. This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent: * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos? I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona0 -
Can penalties be passed via 301 redirect?
I have a well established domain that's been hit with some penalties. It hasn't been nuked off the map, just downgraded, especially on short-tail, one word type queries. I'm planning on redirecting this domain to another well established domain. The domains already have a history of lots of interlinking and are very similar from a subject matter standpoint. I feel that the penalized domain has been hit with an "over-optimization" of link anchor text penalty (I'm hoping it's algorithmic, but it could be manual). My question is if anyone has ever heard of a penalty like this being transferred to another domain through a 301 redirect. My hope is that the penalty just puts a cap on how much juice the redirect can pass, rather than transferring the penalty to the other domain itself. Any thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOMG1