Soft 404
-
Hey forum,
My site is a Price Comparison site. Lately I've been getting some "Soft 404" errors with the Webmaster tool. I'll try to explain the steps causing it:
1. There's a valid link to a product
2. At some point the product is temporary out of stock or unavailable.
3. Google crawls this product page, getting a valid page with a message explaining this product is unavailable at this time.
4. Google see this page for few different products and (I assume) figures it's a none existing page and so it's a soft 404.
The possible solutions I see are:
1. Return real 404, I'm not a fan of this solution, because these links will very likely be valid again when the product is back in stock.
2. Live with some "soft 404" errors in the webmaster tool.
3. Find another way to explain to Google that it's not a real 404. This sounds great but I'm not sure how this can be done.
Any thoughts which would be the best method? Or maybe another solution I haven't thought of?
Thank you.
-
You're welcome. I hope it all works out as you expect.
-
Without getting too technical, currently the user isn't really being redirected at all, because it's a dynamic page with the results, which can be any number, in this case, 0.
I will take your advice and indeed create a custom "out of stock" page that will be returned for all these cases. Maybe it will be clearer to Google. Obviously these won't rank well, but I'm fine with it, as long as I don't get ranking penalty for the entire site, for none existing pages. Under the circumstances I guess this is the best option.
Thank you very Daniel, you've been very helpful.
-
This is where it goes a bit over my head as a programer, which I'm not, but we would need to dive into the code a bit. I'm not sure I can be of help with details, but from what I'm understanding is as follows.
I understand that if a product is in stock, it shows the page, if the product is not in stock, rather than that pages information changing to say it is no longer in stock, you get redirected to or the page changes to a new page that simply says it can't find what you are looking for.
If I'm right, you need to change the code so when a product is not found or no longer in stock, instead of pointing to this dead page returning zero, or instead of just having that page deleted (in turn being 404), have the page change content or redirect to another page saying it is no longer in stock.
I'm not sure I'm clear here, but what I'm saying is, have it direct to a page you created yourself that says you are temporarily out of stock, rather than the program automatically generating a 404 page.
I hope this helps send you in the right direction, otherwise I'm no programer so can't give you exact instructions, but maybe someone who knows e-commerce programming can help here.
-
Thanks again Daniel.
I'm a web developer too
What would a "proper page" be though? Keep in mind at this point I don't know anything about this product. Each general "out of stock" page will be the same for each product making it a "soft 404" probably, unless I make it a real 404, which will solve the "soft 404" but will create a new problem, 404 pages for some previously valid URLs.
Both are not good, I'm aware of it, however, we are talking less than 0.05% of the site's pages.
-
OK, from what I can see in your example link and what you just confirmed in your last note, the problem is in the design of the database search.
If a product is out of stock, instead of just saying that particular product is out of stock, it comes back with a 0 search results returned. It's basically searching for something and takes you to a page saying that doesn't exist. That would totally explain why you are getting soft 404 errors because you are basically searching for a page that doesn't exist.
You need your web developer to fix this so it takes you to a proper page with some sort of information rather than what is currently a nice looking soft 404 page.
-
Thanks for the reply Daniel. Here's an example link: link
Basically anything with a wrong number will return this page. I know it's not a great page for this purpose, just a regular product page with 0 items and a message. It's just rare enough that we didn't spend too much on it. How rare? According to the Webmaster tool, out of the last 296k pages crawled, 70 were found.
Basically at this point, I have no information on this item, all I know is that someone got here so it's probably a valid product code, which is true unless someone just edited the URL manually.
-
I'm not an expert in this area, but it sounds like a coding issue. Somehow when Google looks at the page it triggers that error. If I understand correctly, when you are out of stock, the system automatically generates a message that says it is out of stock. What does that page look like? Maybe if you post an example of that webpage it could be helpful.
I'm thinking you will need to modify that out of stock template so it includes other information. Whether it be as Kaushal recommended, or even just plain text saying anything. Maybe "Sorry we are currently out of stock, please check back later or contact us for an ETA". Having other information on the page should show to Google it is still an active page with content on it. One way or another, the problem sounds like it's with that out of stock template the database is using.
Maybe I'm way off, but if you link to an example page, that would probably help.
-
Thanks for the reply Kaushal. We actually don't have a system currently that lists similar products and considering we have over 20 million products, it's also not a minor thing to implement. Anyway I'm not sure I like the way other sites try to push products that aren't really what you were looking for.
-
Can't you show message "Product is out of stock for now" message. And show related product below with "You might be interested in below product" message.
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
-
Viewing search results for 'We possibly have internal links that link to 404 pages. What is the most efficient way to check our sites internal links?
We possibly have internal links on our site that point to 404 pages as well as links that point to old pages. I need to tidy this up as efficiently as possible and would like some advice on the best way to go about this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Can't diagnose this 404 error
Hi Moz community I have started receiving a load of 404 errors that look like this: This page: http://paulminors.com/blog/page/5/ is linking to: http://paulminors.com/category/podcast/paulminors.com which is a broken link. This is happening with a load of other pages as well. It seems that "paulminors.com" is being added to the end of the linking pages URL.I'm using Wordpress and the SEO by Yoast plugin. I have searched for this link in the source of the linking page but can't find it, so I'm struggling to diagnose the problem. Does anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this? Thanks in advance Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
404 Pages. Can I change it to do this without getting penalized ? I want to lower our bounce rate from these pages to encourage the user to continue on the site
Hi All, We have been streaming our site and got rid of thousands of pages for redundant locations (Basically these used to be virtual locations where we didn't have a depot although we did deliver there and most of them was duplicate/thin content etc ). Most of them have little if any link value and I didn't want to 301 all of them as we already have quite a few 301's already We currently display a 404 page but I want to improve on this. Current 404 page is - http://goo.gl/rFRNMt I can get my developer to change it, so it will still be a 404 page but the user will see the relevant category page instead ? So it will look like this - http://goo.gl/Rc8YP8 . We could also use Java script to show the location name etc... Would be be okay ? or would google see this as cheating. basically I want to lower our bounce rates from these pages but still be attractive enough for the user to continue in the site and not go away. If this is not a good idea, then any recommendations on improving our current 404 would be greatly appreciated. thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
What are Soft 404's and are they a problem
Hi, I have some old pages that were coming up in google WMT as a 404. These had links into them so i thought i'd do a 301 back to either the home page or to a relevant category or page. However these are now listed in WMT as soft 404's. I'm not sure what this means and whether google is saying it doesn't like this? Any advice welcomed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
200 for Site Visitors, 404 for Google (but possibly 200?)
A 2nd question we have about another site we're working with... Currently if a visitor to their site accesses a page that has no content in a section, it shows a message saying that there is no information currently available and the page shows 200 for the user, but shows 404 for Google. They are asking us if it would be better to change the pages to 200's for Google and what impact that might have considering there would be different pages displaying the same 'no information here' message.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Do 404 Pages from Broken Links Still Pass Link Equity?
Hi everyone, I've searched the Q&A section, and also Google, for about the past hour and couldn't find a clear answer on this. When inbound links point to a page that no longer exists, thus producing a 404 Error Page, is link equity/domain authority lost? We are migrating a large eCommerce website and have hundreds of pages with little to no traffic that have legacy 301 redirects pointing to their URLs. I'm trying to decide how necessary it is to keep these redirects. I'm not concerned about the page authority of the pages with little traffic...I'm concerned about overall domain authority of the site since that certainly plays a role in how the site ranks overall in Google (especially pages with no links pointing to them...perfect example is Amazon...thousands of pages with no external links that rank #1 in Google for their product name). Anyone have a clear answer? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Should I remove 404 urls in webmaster tools?
I've recently removed a lot of category pages so should I remove the urls in webmaster tools or let them drop out of the index naturally?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
How to prevent 404's from a job board ?
I have a new client with a job listing board on their site. I am getting a bunch of 404 errors as they delete the filled jobs. Question: Should we leave the the jobs pages up for extra content and entry points to the site and put a notice like this job has been filled, please search our other job listings ? Or should I no index - no follow these pages ? Or any other suggestions - it is an employment agency site. Overall what would be the best practice going forward - we are looking at probably 20 jobs / pages per month.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90