Godaddy and Soft 404's
-
Hello,
We've found that a website we manage has a list of not-found URLS in Google webmaster tools which are "soft 404's " according to Google. I went to the hosting company GoDaddy to explain and to see what they could do. As far as I can see GoDaddy's server are responding with a 200 HTTP error code - meaning that the page exists and was served properly. They have sort of disowned this as their problem. Their server is not serving up a true 404 response. This is a WordPress site. 1) Has anyone seen this problem before with GoDaddy?Is it a GoDaddy problem?2) Do you know a way to sort this issue? When I use the command site:mydomain.co.uk the number of URLs indexed is about right except for 2 or 3 "soft URLs" . So I wonder why webmaster tools report so many yet I can't see them all in the index?
-
We haven't tried the plug-in yet. The pages not found route to a custom 404 page so we can see a 302 redirect to that and then the 200 because the custom page was displayed. Per other forums we tried forcing the 404 return code prior to the page being loaded but this seems to be getting ignored or overwritten by GoDaddy.
I understand some people view the 200 as being correct as a page was loaded correctly but Google does ask for a 404 for a page not found.
-
Hi again, Al123al! Are you able to provide any info about your CMS? Or did the Redirection plugin recommendation take care of it? If so, please mark Dan's response as a Good Answer.
-
What CMS platform are you using? If you're on WordPress, for example, you can use the Redirection plugin to redirect any non-existing url to an existing relevant page.
Alternatively you can do the same with your .htaccess file.
-
The URLS don't exist but I can't see a way of having them return a 404.
-
Hi AL123al! Did Dan's response help? We'd love an update.
-
-
I have a few sites on Godaddy and haven't seen anything unusual occurring for soft 404s.
-
It depends on the cause - are they a large percentage of the total indexed pages? By the sound of it they're only 2 or 3 from a total of how many?
The solution is usually to check why your pages aren't returning a proper 404 error code if they don't exist, or whether there is an issue with them being redirected somewhere.
-
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
-
Is there an easy way to hide one of your URL's on google search?, rather than redirecting?
We don't want to redirect to a different page, as some people still use it, we just don't want it to appear in search
Technical SEO | | TheIDCo0 -
Soft 404 error
Hello friends
Technical SEO | | industriestaedt
This is my site
https://www.alihosseini.org/ In the search console I have a soft 404 error
How can I fix this error?
I use WordPress0 -
Redirects & 404 Errors
Hi everyone, I'm probably missing some GLARING error here, but I'm hoping you can help me! We recently built a new website on Wordpress and attempted to use a redirect plugin to take care of some old pages. The issue we are having though, is that when you click an old link you are not automatically redirected and instead are given a 404 error page. Then, when you try to view another page (by clicking a navigation item), every pages shows a 404 error. I implemented a redirect plugin, however it seems to start to work then still throws the 404 page. I believe this has something to do with the htaccess file which has the standard WP rewrite info in there... The way the old site was setup was kind of janky, so wondering if it's on that side or if I'm just going crazy. An old URL example would be http://orchards inn.com/index.php/specials and the new page is http://orchardsinn.com/special-offers. Sometimes the redirect seems to work, and others it actually throws a 404 page, then every other page in the navigation is 404'd as well. Your help is GREATLY appreciated!!
Technical SEO | | marisolmarketing0 -
Can the Hosting location of image files have a negative effect if 'off-site' such as on the devs own media server ?
Hi Can the Hosting location of image files have a negative effect if 'off-site' such as if they are on the developers own media server ? As opposed to on the actual websites server or file structure ? In the case i'm looking at the image files are hosted on a totally separate server (a media subdomain of the developers site server) from the subject sites dedicated server. Will engines still attribute the properties of files hosted in this manner to the main website (such as file name, alt attributes, etc etc) ? Or should they really be on the subject sites server own media folder ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
I have a 404 error on my site i can't find.
I have looked everywhere. I thought it might have just showed up while making some changes, so while in webmaster tools i said it was fixed.....It's still there. Even moz pro found it. error is http://mydomain.com/mydomain.com No idea how it even happened. thought it might be a plugin problem. Any ideas how to fix this?
Technical SEO | | NateStewart0 -
.htaccess and error 404
Hi, I permit to contact the community again because you have good and quick answer ! Yesterday, I lost the file .htaccess on my server. Right now, only the home page is working and the other pages give me this message : Not Found The requested URL /freshadmin/user/login/ was not found on this server Could you help me please? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Probikeshop0 -
Do you get credit for an external link that points to a page that's being blocked by robots.txt
Hi folks, No one, including me seems to actually know what happens!? To repeat: If site A links to /home.html on site B and site B blocks /home.html in Robots.txt, does site B get credit for that link? Does the link pass PageRank? Will Google still crawl through it? Does the domain get some juice, but not the page? I know there's other ways of doing this properly, but it is interesting no?
Technical SEO | | DaveSottimano0 -
If I redirect my WordPress blog to my main site, will it help my main site's SEO?
I have separate sites for my blog and main website. I'd like to link them in a way that enables the blog to boost my main site's SEO. Is there an easy way to do this? Thanks in advance for any advice...
Technical SEO | | matt-145670