Can you 404 any forms of URL?
-
Hi seomozzers,
<colgroup><col width="548"></colgroup>
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F256%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F258%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F242%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F257%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F260%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F225%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F251%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F176%23comment-form |These are duplicate content and the canonical version is: http://www.ex.com/user (login and pass page of the website)
Since there were multiple other duplicates which mostly have been resolved by 301s, I figured that all "LOGIN" URLs (above) should be 404d since they don't carry any authority and 301 those wouldn't be the best solution since "too many 301s" can slow down the website speed.
But a member of the dev team said:
"Looks like all the urls requested to '404 redirect' are actually the same page http://ex.com/user/login. The only part of the url that changes is the variables after the "?" . I don't think you can (or highly not recommended) make 404 pages display for variables in a url. "
So my question is: I am not sure what he means by that? and Is it really better to not 404 these?
Thanks
-
I believe this file is the base template for all the others. So if you put it on the main one, it should be on the others. That is why I suggested to add it and then view the code of the others to verify it is there as well.
-
Hi Dr.Peter,
Thanks for this great suggestion but could you tell me if the canonical would be a solution and if yes, could you tell me if my answer to Brent is right?
Thanks
-
Thanks Brent,
Interesting, I thought you would put the canonical version of the URL on all duplicates. Have you done it before?
-
I believe all you have to do is put this tag
On the main login page (should be the same url) and it will cover all variations.
If you aren't sure, go ahead and add it then view the source code of the pages above to see if they all have the same rel=canonical tag.
-
Hey Brent,
For Rel=canonical
I should insert this tag:
rel="canonical" href="http://www.ex.com/user/login" />
in each of these pages
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F256%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F258%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F242%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F257%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F260%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F225%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F251%23comment-form |
| http://ex.com/user/login?destination=comment%2Freply%2F176%23comment-form |Is that correct?
Thanks
-
I would either go with parameter blocking or META NOINDEX this page (that's probably a bit more effective). It would be better to block it from Google than to 404 100s of variants, as you could see a spike in 404s and that can cause some problems.
Sorry, edited this - you don't want to 404 the login pages, because that's going to return a 404 for visitors as well, and the pages won't function properly. You want to just keep this away from the bots.
-
Are they actual not found pages? If not then I wouldn't 404 them, and I have never tried to 404 parameters.
Also, I would make sure you setup a rel=canonical tag. This will also help with the duplicates.
-
Drupal and Logintoboggan is maybe not configured correctly. It seems that cleanurls is not setup as well.
Maybe that will solve your issues?
-
Thanks Brent:)
But can you tell me why this wouldn't be good to 404? what is the reason behind that statement?
Thanks
-
Instead of trying to 404 those, I would suggest utilizing GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) and use their "URL Parameters". This will allow you to tell Google not to index all of them.
Log into GWT, under "Site configuration" select "URL paremters".
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
-
SEO - New URL structure
Hi, Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name. Can you, please confirm the following: 1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc. 2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs? Many thanks Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska1 -
What should I do with all these 404 pages?
I have a website that Im currently working on that has been fairly dormant for a while and has just been given a face lift and brought back to life. I have some questions below about dealing with 404 pages. In Google WMT/search console there are reports of thousands of 404 pages going back some years. It says there are over 5k in total but I am only able to download 1k or so from WMT it seems. I ran a crawl test with Moz and the report it sent back only had a few hundred 404s in, why is that? Im not sure what to do with all the 404 pages also, I know that both Google and Moz recommend a mixture of leaving some as 404s and redirect others and Id like to know what the community here suggests. The 404s are a mix of the following: Blog posts and articles that have disappeared (some of these have good back-links too) Urls that look like they used to belong to users (the site used to have a forum) which where deleted when the forum was removed, some of them look like they were removed for spam reasons too eg /user/buy-cheap-meds-online and others like that Other urls like this /node/4455 (or some other random number) Im thinking I should permanently redirect the blog posts to the homepage or the blog but Im not sure what to do about all the others? Surely having so many 404s like this is hurting my crawl rate?
Technical SEO | | linklander0 -
Quest about 404 Errors
About two months ago, we deleted some unnecessary pages on our website that were no longer relevant. However, MOZ is still saying that these deleted pages are returning 404 errors when a crawl test is done. The page is no longer there, at least that I can see. What is the best solution for this? I have a page that similar to the older page, so is it a good choice to just redirect the bad page to my good page? If so, what's the best way to do this. I found some useful information searching but none of it truly pertained to me. I went around my site to make sure there were no old links that directed traffic to the non existent page, and there are none.
Technical SEO | | Meier0 -
No Keyword in URL
SEOMoz (and other platforms) advise that I need to add my keyword to the page URL, however as far as I'm concerned it has been, so why don't these platforms see it. My home page URL is www.salesandinternetmarketing.com, but apparently I haven't added the keyword internet marketing to the URL, what advice can you give me please? Lindsay
Technical SEO | | lindsayjhopkins1 -
Remove 404 errors
I've got a site (www.dikelli.com.au) that has some 404 errors. I'm using Dreamweaver to manage the site which was built for me by I can't seem to figure out how to remove the 404 pages as it's not showing up in the directory? How would I fix this up?
Technical SEO | | sterls0 -
Query strings in Canoncials URLs
Video on my site all resides at www.mydomain.com/video in a player that does not assign unique URLs for each video. We may be able to rewrite the URLs to include a unique identifier found in the video's metadata (www.mydomain.com/video/?bctid=17769780). If I did this, how would it impact the canonical URL? Do the SEs accept canonicals with query strings? What if I only changed the canonical URL and did not change the video's URL? Would that be a problem?
Technical SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Re-write of url
Hi, I would like your input on the following dilemma I am wanting to target the keyword "download xml". at the moment Google indexes us on page 2 and indexes the page www.ourdomain.com/download.aspx I would like to rewrite the url to be /download-xml-editor.aspx The current page is a pr5 and is our most trafficked and externally inked to page. My thoughts are quite mixed on how to do this. approach 1: re-write url of "download.aspx" and setup permanent 301 redirect of download.aspx to download-xml-editor.aspx approach 2: create a new page called download-xml-editor and 301 redirect that to the current stronger page which is download.aspx approach 3: create new page called download-xml-editor with unique content and try and get that page to rank over time, allowing it to build up links and not compromise the current page, then later 301 redirect How would you deal with this and what are your recommendations
Technical SEO | | LiquidTech0