Why the sudden increase in soft 404s?
-
I haven't made any changes to my site but in a week I am showing 30-40 soft 404s in Webmaster Tools. This just started happening in the last 2 weeks. When I click to go to the pages they are fine, and even fetch and render works fine on the pages.
-
They have stopped, with no changes to the site. I have no idea why. Thank you for the offer though.
-
Hi EcommerceSite!
Would love to help you figure this out - please PM the URL. Thanks!
-
It seems to have stopped with no changes to the site. I have no idea why.
-
Hi EcommerceSite,
Can't see an answer to your question so far, are you still having issues?
If you want to send me a pm with your url then I'll have a look at this for you.
Tom
-
I can send it in a message.
-
Hi EcommerceSite!
It really sounds like folks will need to check out your site, or at least have a lot more information, in order to give much more advice. Is that something you can share?
-
Loading times have stayed really stable.
There are no 404 errors in either tool.
Using the fetch as Googlebot tool the pages all work fine.
It doesn't make any sense.
-
Hi,
This can occur if Google's crawlers for some reason is not able to reach some of your pages. It could be related to some network issues, or temporary server issues. A few things to look at:
- Do you see any increased loading times for your pages?
- When looking at the page with firebug or chrome's inspector tools - do you see any 404 errors returned
- What result do you get if using the Fetch as Googlebot tool?
Hope this helps
Best regards,Anders
-
It'd be great if you can share what your site is so people can check it out and see if they can figure out what's going on. 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
-
Sudden Drop from #1 to #12
Hello Moz community,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marcmayo
I am really happy to be here and I start right away with a quite tricky question I'd say. We are running Star-Registration.com and in March switched platforms to Shopify. All the Redirects etc were done according to standards. Nevertheless, Star-Registration.com dropped in May (2 months after the switch) for "name a star" and "buy a star" from #1 to the 2nd Page of Google Results after being on #1 for almost 3 consecutive years. We had a similar case with their german website but the german one is back on the top 3 rankings again for all the important keywords. I attached a Screenshot of the Search Console stats
Any suggestions? yv6pep0 -
[Question] 880 old back links suddenly disappeared from google console
Hi everyone Last month I bought a premium domain from an auction, right after I bought the domain, I added it into google webmaster tools. It showed me site traffic, and 893 backlinks. So until today, all those backlink count was there. And when I checked the console today, it shows only 13 new backlinks which I started building last week. what has happened to all those old 880 old backlinks?I checked from Moz, those backlinks are still there. Am i doing something wrong? Or is this another Google dance? URL https://goread.io
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gizmos120 -
Google Detecting Real Page as Soft 404 Error
We've migrated my site from HTTP to HTTPS protocols in Sep 2017 but I noticed after migration soft 404 granularly increasing. Example of soft 404 page: https://bit.ly/2xBjy4J But these soft 404 error pages are real pages but Google still detects them as soft 404. When I checked the Google cache it shows me the cache but with HTTP page. We've tried all possible solutions but unable to figure out why Google is still indexing to HTTP pages and detecting HTTPS pages as soft 404 error. Can someone please suggest a solution or possible cause for this issue or anyone same issue like this in past.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bheard0 -
How bad are 403 errors compared to 404s in regards to technical SEO?
Google Webmaster Tools reports "Access Denied" 403 errors. They also provide an explanation of what they mean at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2409441?ctx=MCE&ctx=AD&hl=en. What are the implications of these Access Denied errors? Should they be 301 redirected internally?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Practical steps to increase Domain Authority
Having read the Neil Patel's guide to DA, I am still at a loss as to practical steps, I can do to help improve my Domain Authority. This is a summary of findings / action plan so far: 1. Building quality incoming links by producing excellent content that people will love! 2. Having "related articles" to keep users on site for longer, and provide more information I am certain I am missing some more steps? More worryingly my DA has gone down from 8 to 5! I do not know how to improve it? Please help with real practical steps that I can use.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | propertysaviour0 -
Using disavow tool for 404s
Hey Community, Got a question about the disavow tool for you. My site is getting thousands of 404 errors from old blog/coupon/you name it sites linking to our old URL structure (which used underscores and ended in .jsp). It seems like the webmasters of these sites aren't answering back or haven't updated their sites in ages so it's returning 404 errors. If I disavow these domains and/or links will it clear out these 404 errors in Google? I read the GWT help page on it, but it didn't seem to answer this question. Feel free to ask any questions that may help you understand the issue more. Thanks for your help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IceIcebaby
-Reed0 -
Why is Google Reporting big increase in duplicate content after Canonicalization update?
Our web hosting company recently applied a update to our site that should have rectified Canonicalized URLs. Webmaster tools had been reporting duplicate content on pages that had a query string on the end. After the update there has been a massive jump in Webmaster tools reporting now over 800 pages of duplicate content, Up from about 100 prior to the update plus it reporting some very odd pages (see attached image) They claim they have implement Canonicalization in line with Google Panda & Penguin, but surely something is not right here and it's going to cause us a big problem with traffic. Can anyone shed any light on the situation??? Duplicate%20Content.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Sudden and Aggressive Fall in Rankings
I have seen a sudden and aggressive drop in rankings for my site. The site was ranking #4 for rental insurance and now sits at #9. It was ranking #16 for renters insurance and now dropped to #171. We vary anchor text in our link building campaign and focus on getting links from PR3+ sites as well as produce content for quality sites in exchange for being a featured author + link. The site has not been over optimized (i.e. keyword stuffing, etc.). I would appreciate any insight into what could be causing this significant drop in rankings and what my course of action is to reinstate my rankings - Penguin?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj7750