Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Redirects (301/302) versus errors (404)
-
I am not able to convincingly decide between using redirects versus using 404 errors. People are giving varied opinions. Here are my cases
1. Coding errors - we put out a bad link
a. Some people are saying redirect to home page; the user at least has something to do PLUS more importantly it does NOT hurt your SEO ranking.
b. Counter - the page ain't there. Return 404
2. Product removed - link1 to product 1 was out there. We removed product1; so link1 is also gone. It is either lying in people's bookmarks, OR because of coding errors we left it hanging out at some places on our site.
-
To add to what George says....
Google often tries to crawl pages that don't exist - simply to make sure they aren't missing anything on your site. When a page is clearly broken, you want to communicate this to Google by serving a 404 (but you can make it a friendly 404)
Here's what Googler John Mueller has to say:
What about the funky URLs that are “clearly broken?” When our algorithms like your site, they may try to find more great content on it, for example by trying to discover new URLs in JavaScript. If we try those “URLs” and find a 404, that’s great and expected. We just don’t want to miss anything important (insert overly-attached Googlebot meme here)."
Google expects to find 404s on your site. When they don't find 404s for links that should be broken, this sends confusing signals and could cause crawl problems.
I recommend reading this entire article - it's one of the most helpful I've ever read on the subject: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ch/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html
As for expired products - as George said it's best to 301 them, usually to a category level page.
-
I have similar issue, Recently Google blocked my blog for Google Adsense then after removing two to five articles, now they are online.
But now i get more 404 error for that page. I removed from the blog, I drafted them, in case if google not allowed the ads, i will re-publish it.
Now i have to remove the post link from the search results and from cPanel i can redirect to the home page
Their Page Authority is 25-30 respectively ! Plz advice me !
-
Richard and Moosa are right, use a friendly 404 page to help your users when they reach a page that can no longer be found. Simply redirecting them to the home page doesn't fix the issue of the missing page. Here's an old, but relevant, post on the subject: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/personalizing-your-404-error-pages.
For your second issue, if you've permanently moved to a new product page, you should certainly 301 redirect to not only pass on all the link juice from the old page, but also to provide the best user experience for your customers - they were looking for the product so give them the new improved page :).
-
Ok, here is the easiest way to understand this (As far as I think)!
- 404: This is the status code that browser give when the page on the website is not available.
- 302: This is the status code of the page if it is temporary redirected to some new page. This simply means that old page will not pass the link juice to the new page but when user reach to this URL will drive them to a new location.
- 301: This is the status code which does almost the same work as 302 but in that case old URL passes its link juice as well. This is commonly known as permanent redirection.
Websites usually should not use 404 as this disturbs the user experience of the page but upon requirement and keeping scenarios in mind use of 301 or 302 is always an intelligent approach.
-
Hi For 1: I would suggest a custom friendly 404 page. This means the user sees a page saying something like 'Sorry the product / page you were after no longer exists. Here are some useful options ( then list a handful of popular page links). You could even includes a site search or your tel number / email to contact. This means the user knows what has hppened, had somewhere useful to go but it returns a 404. For 2: If the page is being moved - use a 301 redirect on the existing page. If you are simply not selling that product anymore than do a 404 as above. In both cases monitor your GA and GWT for 404s and fix where applicable. All the best. Richard
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
-
Should I Redirect Pagination?
Working on a redirect map for a client moving platforms and they have all of their category pagination indexed - no canonical link and no rel next/prev's on any of them. Should I redirect the pagination pages to the main category page on the new platform? Or Should I allow the pagination to de-index itself type of thing? Thoughts and experience?
Web Design | | paul-bold0 -
Do I need to 301 redirect www.domain.com/index.html to www.domain.com/ ?
So, interestingly enough, the Moz crawler picked up my index.html file (homepage) and reported duplicate content, of course. But, Google hasn't seemed to index the www.domain.com/index.html version of my homepage, just the www.domain.com version. However, it looks like I do have links going specifically to www.domain.com/index.html and I want to make sure those are getting counted towards my overall domain strength. Is it necessary to 301 redirect in the scenario described above?
Web Design | | Small_Business_SEO0 -
Help with error: Not Found The requested URL /java/backlinker.php was not found on this server.
Hi all, We got this error for almost a month now. Until now we were outsourcing the webdesign and optimization, and now we are doing it in house, and the previous company did not gave us all the information we should know. And we've been trying to find this error and fix it with no result. Have you encounter this issue before? Did anyone found or knows a solution? Also would this affect our website in terms of SEO and in general. Would be very grateful to hear from you. Many thanks. Here is what appears on the bottom of the site( www.manvanlondon.co.uk) Not Found The requested URL /java/backlinker.php was not found on this server. <address>Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) Server at 01adserver.com Port 80</address> <address> </address> <address> </address>
Web Design | | monicapopa0 -
Wordpress - redirecting tags
I just ran a webmaster tool from Yoast SEO premium and notice I have a lot of problems with tags (restricted-robots-txt) For example : http://www.soobumimphotography.com/tag/wedding-group-photo/ Do I have to redirect to http://www.soobumimphotography.com/wedding-group-photo/ Should I do this to each and every posts Thank you
Web Design | | soobumim0 -
Is it cloaking/hiding text if textual content is no longer accessible for mobile visitors on responsive webpages?
My company is implementing a responsive design for our website to better serve our mobile customers. However, when I reviewed the wireframes of the work our development company is doing, it became clear to me that, for many of our pages, large parts of the textual content on the page, and most of our sidebar links, would no longer be accessible to a visitor using a mobile device. The content will still be indexable, but hidden from users using media queries. There would be no access point for a user to view much of the content on the page that's making it rank. This is not my understanding of best practices around responsive design. My interpretation of Google's guidelines on responsive design is that all of the content is served to both users and search engines, but displayed in a more accessible way to a user depending on their mobile device. For example, Wikipedia pages have introductory content, but hide most of the detailed info in tabs. All of the information is still there and accessible to a user...but you don't have to scroll through as much to get to what you want. To me, what our development company is proposing fits the definition of cloaking and/or hiding text and links - we'd be making available different content to search engines than users, and it seems to me that there's considerable risk to their interpretation of responsive design. I'm wondering what other people in the Moz community think about this - and whether anyone out there has any experience to share about inaccessable content on responsive webpages, and the SEO impact of this. Thank you!
Web Design | | mmewdell0 -
Does Google follow links inside a <noscript>tag?</noscript>
I'm looking at making an embedable calculator and asking users to embed it to their website. I had the idea of using javascript to include the calculator which would also conatain a text link back to my site in order to gain some back links. If it's possible Google won't see the link (as they may not execute the javascript), is it safe to place the link in the <noscript>tag? If so, Will it be indexed and will Page Rank be passed?</span></p> <p>Thanks in advance for your answers. </p> <p>Anthony</p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span></p></noscript>
Web Design | | BallyhooLtd0 -
Does anyone think the <figcaption>attribute from HTML5 will have any influence for image search?</figcaption>
There is a <figure>element that is supposed to provide better descriptions of image on the web in HTML5 - do you think that will replace the importance of the "Alt" tag? Link to figcaption description </figure>
Web Design | | RankSurge2 -
XML Sitemap that updates daily/weekly?
Hi, I have a sitemap on my site, that updates but it isn't a XML sitemap. See here: http://www.designerboutique-online.com/sitemap/ I have used some free software to crawl the site and create a sitemap of pages, however I think that if I were to upload the sitemap, it would be out of date as soon as I listed new products on the site, so would need to rerun it. Does anyone know how I can get this to refresh daily or weekly? Or any software that can do it? I have a web firm that are willing to do one, but our relationship is at an all time low and I don't want to hand over £200 for them to do one. Anyone with any ideas or advice? Thanks Will
Web Design | | WillBlackburn0