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
-
Site Wide Links
Howdy Moz! So our agency has been around for long enough to have a few sites we've built that have our credit in their footer resulting in a site wide link. Mostly just our name. We've heard that Google does not particularly like site wide links, should we go through and remove some of these old links?
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia0 -
Alt text / internal linking
Hi everyone A question about best practice when linking from pictures on our homepage - hirespace.com We have an option of using divs with background images (nicer in terms of design) but it means that we can't use anchor text or alt text to show Google what these internal links are about. The other option is to use images which do not allow us as much flexibility in terms of CSS but would allow us to use alt text. There is also an opinion that we should have separate text links at the bottom of the homepage to get the anchor page in. What is best practice in this situation - is alt text worth sacrificing some CSS flexibility for? How important is anchor/alt text for internal linking? Thanks guys.
On-Page Optimization | | HireSpace0 -
New google serps page design
hi i know title length displayed is now based on pixels rather than character but still thought safe to have titles up to 70 characters long before they are truncated i see that on the new G serps designed pages titles that were showing in full on old design (without truncation) are now being truncated. As in same title shows fine (displays in full) on old design serps but truncated on new designed page Anyone else notice this ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence1 -
Title Tags not Displaying in SERPs Correctly
We have two websites that are very similar. One is .co.nz and the other is a .com.au. I've noticed some of our page titles are displaying differently in SERPs even though the title tags are formatted the same:e.g. The title: "PC Games | at Mighty Ape Australia" shows as: "PC Games | at Mighty Ape Australia - MightyApe.com.au"It's showing with extra text "- MightyApe.com.au". Whereas the NZ result for the title "PC Games | at Mighty Ape NZ" is fine i.e. displays as: "PC Games | at Mighty Ape NZ"Does anyone who why this might be happening?P.S. It's odd that in the Australian results the site links don't show up even though the sites are structured the same.
On-Page Optimization | | kevinliao0 -
What is on page links?
Hi - i would like to know exactly what an on page link is? i understand the linking system however cant work what exactly what an on page link is? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | OasisLandDevelopment0 -
Are To Many Rel Canonical Links A Bad Thing?
Are To Many Rel Canonical Links A Bad Thing? I had "twin" domains so I redirected my .com to www..com and now I have a lot of Rel Canonical Links.
On-Page Optimization | | Mike.Bean0 -
Fixing large number of 404s
Hi Newbie SEO here.... I converted quite a massive site to wordpress (www.yourbusinesschannel.com). For a number of reasons, over 1000 pages were not converted and the URLs could not easily be preserved in any event I am now going to add these pages back by importing a large CSV into wordpress. However what is the best way to tell google that the pages are now back and at new addresses? Is it to submit a site map and get the site recrawled from scratch?
On-Page Optimization | | JamesKirkyBCtv0 -
Canonical Tag for a 404 page
Hi i have a got a 404 page for example : www.example.com/404.aspx can i use canonical tag on this page so that when the search engine hits the page www.example.com/123123123 13123 it will say Will this be right method ?
On-Page Optimization | | usef4u0