Googlebot HTTP 204 Status Code Handling?
-
If a user runs a search that returns no results, and the server returns a 204 (No Content), will Googlebot treat that as the rough equivalent of a 404 or a noindex? If not, then it seems one would want to noindex the page to avoid low quality penalties, but that might require more back and forth with the server, which isn't ideal.
Kurus
-
Thanks for your input.
-
I believe Google handles 204 codes the same as 200. They index a page with basically no content. Unless someone links to a 204 page however, Google will never see one by your example. Google is not out and about running searches on websites to see what comes up to find more content to index. If someone were to search on your site and get a 204, then link to it, then yeah, Google could crawl and index it. In that case though you might see it in your webmaster tools under crawl errors. Then you could noindex it or block it with robots.txt or something else.
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 to handle images (lazy loading, compressing, caching...) to impact page load and thus SEO?
Hi all, I am looking for a conclusive answer on how to handle images on Wordpress websites. Most of the time we encounter the same problems regarding images. There are several options to make sure that images don't increase page load too much: Page caching and compressing: standard Lazy loading: helps decrease page load time, but Google might not crawl the images so not good for SEO. See this article on Googlebot scrolling. Correct image format (for example WebP): tried it several times and doesn't help much to decrease page load time. What is best practice? Are there standards or preferred options for the image dimensions and quality (max height, width, number of pixels, rectangular or square) before you upload it, also regarding responsiveness? Is it better to use .jpg, .png or WebP? To sum up, what should you do by default to handle images on websites so you can still have a good page speed even with loads of images? Thanks for your answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Http and https protocols being indexed for e-commerce website
Hi team, Our new e-commerce website has launched and I've noticed both http and https protocols are being indexed. www.mountainjade.co.nz Our old website was http with only the necessary pages running https (cart, checkout etc). No https pages were indexed and you couldn't access a https page if you manually typed it into the browser. We outrank our competition by a mile, so I'm treading carefully here and don't want to undo the progress we made on the old site, so I have a few questions: 1. How exactly do we remove one protocol from the index? We are running on Drupal. We tried a hard redirect from https to http and excluded the relevant pages (cart, login etc from the redirect), but found that you could still access https pages if you we're in the cart (https) and then pressed back on the browser button for example. At that point you could browse the entire site on https. 2. Is the safer option to emulate what we had in place on the old website e.g http with only the necessary pages being https, rather than making the switch to sitewide https? I've been struggling with this one, so any help would be much appreciated. Jake S
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jacobsheehan0 -
Panda 4.0 Update Affected Site - What should be a the minimum Code to Text Ratio we should aim for ?
Hi All, My eCommerce site got hit badly with the Panda 4.0 update so we have been doing some site auditing and analysis identifying issues which need addressing. We have thin/duplicate issues which I am quite sure was part of the reason we were affected by this even though we use rel=next and rel=prev along with having a separate view all page although we don't concanical tag to this page as I dont' think users would benefit from seeing to many items on one page. This led me to look at our Code to Content Ratio. We have now managed to increase it from 9% to approx 18-22% on popular pages by getting rid of unnecessary code etc. My question is , is there an ideal percentage the code to content ratio should be ?.. and what should I be aiming for ? Also any other Panda 4.0 advice would also be appreciated thanks Sarah
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Two Week eCommerce Site Migration - how to handle visibility
Good day All, We have a eComm site with over 100K pages and migrating to a new site design, new CMS and with a new URL structure for top level URLs only. Product URLs not changing (thank goodness!). We have outlined our strategy for redirects, indexation, 404s, etc. The missing piece of the puzzle is that we're only allowing 10% visitors to see new site at launch and increase visibility over two week; therefore, my question is do we not allow indexing of new site until 100% visibility to all users? How do we manage the redirects for limited visibility? My gut says don't bother for such a short period of time and block new site from SEs until 100% visibility. Since the site would be blocked how are redirects managed? Should we be using a 302 initially then switch to 301 or use a 503 code to indicate "hey, maintenance happening - come back later" with a time frame? Hope that's clear and any tips greatly appreciated. Cheers, WMCA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
Does anyone have a BOTW.org promo code for november yet?
Does anyone have a best of the web directory promo code for november yet?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unitedfitness0 -
Http and https duplicate content?
Hello, This is a quick one or two. 🙂 If I have a page accessible on http and https count as duplicate content? What about external links pointing to my website to the http or https page. Regards, Cornel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornel_Ilea0 -
How to handle link building to product pages that change regularly?
How do I handle building links to an eCommerce site where the product pages change regularly because product is only available for a certain time frame? Should I focus on building links to the category pages instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj7750 -
Any advice for my website http://cvcsports.com?
I run the website http://cvcsports.com for myself and my parents. We offer custom varsity jackets for athletes/companies/etc. We rank first in Google for "letterman jackets" and near the top for "varsity jackets". I really want to reach #1 for "varsity jackets" (we were briefly #1 a few days ago but didn't stay there). Does anyone have any advice on what I can do to achieve that? Thanks in advance for the tips!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandonDoyle0