Will a large percentage of 404 links negatively impact SERP performance?
-
We discovered a broken link and issue with a dynamically generated sitemap that resulted in 9,000+ pages of duplicate content (namely there was not actual 404 page, but content for a 404 page that populated on the broken page).
We've corrected that issue so the 404 page is working correctly now and there aren't any more broken links on the site. However, we just reviewed our Google crawl report, and saw that now there are 9,000+ 404 links in the Google index.
We discovered the initial error when our SERP performance dropped 60% in a month.
Now that we've corrected all the duplicate content pages, will vast number of 404 pages negatively impact SERP results? If so, do you recommend doing 301 redirects to the page it should have gone to, and do you know of any automated tools performing the 301's (it's a standard HTML site, no CMS involved).
Thanks for your help!
-
Thanks for your response. Does it seem probable that this issue caused the 60% drop in SERP performance? The only other variable near the same time was changing hosting providers. We have moved to this provider for other clients, and never saw this kind of change, but that was usually at the beginning of the SEO campaign, not in the middle.
-
Give it a bit of time and it should fix itself. Google will crawl it and find that it is no longer broken.
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
-
How will ranking keywords add on my website
Its been a lot of time since I have launched my website but I am not getting any ranking keywords can you please help me about the following factor or provide some solutions my website is about selling third-party antivirus and technical service: norton.com/setup
On-Page Optimization | | Mehakayna0 -
How the hell do you get microformat to show up on google serp?
Preface: I implemented Microformat aggregate review (http://data-vocabulary.org/Review-aggregate) for our e-commerce website and included only on the homepage. The vote and count are actually coming from real reviews we are getting from our customers, and in the homepage some reviews are shown prominently and a link points to the full list of all the reviews. Microformat markup is correct, validated in GWT. Have been online for a while (probably a couple of years). Our website: http://www.gomme-auto.it The star rating never showed up. When checking competitors I could see their microformats where not showing up either. But now things changed, if I check one competitor (the market leader www.gommadiretto.it) searching for it with their brand name “gommadiretto” no star rating is showing, but if I search for tires of a specific manufactured like “pneumatici barum” I can see their result in serp is showing the star rating for that specific internal page (the brand page) where they simply put the website overall aggregate review microformat mark up, they actually put it on every page. And that make me scratch my head and start asking myself some questions: is google showing their microformats because they manually awarded them somehow? no other competitor seems to have got the star rating in serp is google showing their microformats because they have so much more reviews than I have? I have around 1700, they have around 11000. is google showing their microformats because their reviews are certified by TrustPilot? is google showing their microformats because they put it in the product page? well of course since I am not putting it there (in the brand page) it's a factor, but isn't it recommended to put the website aggregate reviews microformat only on one page? and shouldn't we show the brand reviews on the brand page? isn't it best practice/recommended to put the website aggregate review microformat only on one page? is google showing their microformats because of some other reasons I can't see? What the hell is google criteria for showing the star rating? Does anyone know?
On-Page Optimization | | max.favilli0 -
Will changing a site from https to normal http have any SEO impact if we do automatic redirects?
We currently have a site which uses https and want to change to normal http only (for reasons unrelated to SEO). We were planning to do this with a change in our server configuration (we use Nginx, and can automatically redirect https to http). Our site has been around for approx 1 year, so there are links floating around in the Internet which will still be using https. These will be automatically redirected to http. What will be the impact on our SEO? I understand that our webmaster tools account may need to change...
On-Page Optimization | | michaelcho0 -
To many links on page and penguin
Could to many links on to many pages be a factor that the penguin update would effect your site. I know this is a broad question , but I am curious what people think.
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
Should I link my 3 E-Commerce sites?
Good Morning, I have 3 E-Commerce sites that all sell the same products, but have unique content on them (unique text, unique urls, same products).... Up until now, I have not put any links from one to any of the others... I just started to wonder about that since these are all related to the same industry, and are owned by 1 company, what would be the downside to linking them... Does anyone have any advice on if I should link to each site from the other 2 sites? Also, if you think I should be linking them, please advise how you would do it (on which pages, how many links, anchor texts, etc...) Thanks a lot!
On-Page Optimization | | Prime850 -
Does link text "more information" have more weight than a normal link?
Does the anchor text "more information" hold any additional weight than any other anchor text? My suspicion is no, but just wanted to confirm.
On-Page Optimization | | nicole.healthline0 -
My nofollow link is showing as a 302\. Is this OK?
My nofollow link is showing as a 302. Is this OK? Not looking to pass any juice along but don't want to be penalized either. Thanks Buhrly
On-Page Optimization | | Buhrly0 -
SERP Rankings for Certain Keywords
For some of our keywords, we rank on page one in google, but the page is an individual product and not the catelgory page? Any idea why this is happening? Thanks for your Help!
On-Page Optimization | | MRabidoux0