Why are Pages returning 404 errors not being dropped?
-
Our webmaster tools continues to return anywhere upwards of 750 pages that have 404 errors. These are from pages of a previous site no longer used.
However this was over 1 year ago these pages were dropped along with the 301 re-directs. Why is Google not clearing these from webmaster tools but re-listing them again after 3 month cycle? Is it because external sites have links to these pages?
If so should I put a 301 in place (most of these site are forums and potentially dodgy directories etc from previous poor link building programs) or ask for a manual removal?
-
Thanks tom for all your help.
Regards
Craig
-
Very good point you've raised - 301ing those URLs effectively makes the links to your site "live" again. If the links sit on a dodgy/spammy/poor quality page, then it could harm your site and I wouldn't put the redirect in place.
By in large, if you're beginning to doubt whether the link is worthwhile or not, chances are its not. So if you have a bit of doubt about the link, then don't put the 301 in place.
-
Hi Tom,
That more than explains it and gives me the answers. If I put 301 redirects in place what will happen if any of these external links are bad, will it harm our site? Its taken me many months to deal with duplicate content issues, canonicalisation of the site and much more. It was a complete mess and I don;t want to harm any good that come of all this.
-
Hi Craig
You touched on one of the reasons this is happening in your post - you could external links to these pages. Also, they could still be appearing in the sitemap.
If you go into Webmaster tools > Health > Crawl Errors > Not Found and then click on one of the URLs, you can check whether or not the page is in the sitemap or whether it is being linked to from somewhere.
If you have external links, you have four options. First, you could attempt to change the URLs on the pages they're being linked from. This could be difficult and/or long. Second, as you say, you could 301 redirect. This would be useful if people are coming through those sites still, as you'll be fixing their user journey. It would also pass on any link "juice" that page has to another. Third would be to start returning a 410 error. This explains 410 response codes - it basically tells the Googlebot to treat the URL as gone permanently. This can be a bit tricky to setup and you have to be sure you want use the URL again in the future.
Finally, you could leave the 404s in place. If none of the pages have any strength, no referral traffic is coming from them and they aren't interrupting a user journey in any way, I would simply leave them. Google knows that 404s are just a matter of process and so recognises that 404 errors are simply a natural occurrence. It would only ever be a problem if you returned tens of thousands of them, so you may just want to leave them be.
I would probably 301 redirect any old pages carrying strength to relevant equivalents (if not, the root domain) and leave the other 404s in place. I would rewrite ASAP any URL that is interrupting a user journey.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Google Detecting Real Page as Soft 404 Error
We've migrated my site from HTTP to HTTPS protocols in Sep 2017 but I noticed after migration soft 404 granularly increasing. Example of soft 404 page: https://bit.ly/2xBjy4J But these soft 404 error pages are real pages but Google still detects them as soft 404. When I checked the Google cache it shows me the cache but with HTTP page. We've tried all possible solutions but unable to figure out why Google is still indexing to HTTP pages and detecting HTTPS pages as soft 404 error. Can someone please suggest a solution or possible cause for this issue or anyone same issue like this in past.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bheard0 -
Href Lang Errors
Hi Im getting href lang errors in my site audit for having no self referntial tags. I can't see anything wrong? Can anyone enlighten me 🙂 From this page ** http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/0-4-tonne-wll-6mm-single-leg-wire-rope-sling-580a078n**
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
My page ranking dropped after I made it responsive
Recently, I made one of my site page responsive. It was ranking on 13th Position and after I made the page responsive, it dropped to 24 desktop and 35 on mobile rankings. I ran mobile friendly test and it said "awesome, your page is mobile friendly". Not sure, what went wrong here. Page in question is: https://www.itcontractorsuk.com/ Can someone please advice? Please Note: My site is partially responsive.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThinkWebUK0 -
DAs dropped for many pages?
I recently noticed that the domain authorities dropped by 5 or 6 points for us and for our competitors. And for many other pages that I check regularly. Was the algorithm changed or is it just me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FCRMediaLietuva0 -
Ranking slipped to page 6 from page 1 over the weekend?
My site has been on page one for 2 phrases consistently from May onwards this year. The site has fewer than 100 backlinks and the link profile looks fairly even. On Friday we were on page 1, we even had a position 1, however now we are on page 6. Do you think this is Penguin or some strange Google blip? We have no webmaster tools messages at all. Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinechester0 -
Drop in number of pages in Bing index
I regularly check our index inclusion and this morning saw that we had dropped from having approx 6,000 pages in Bing's index to less than 100. We still have 13,000 in Bing's image index, and I've seen no similar drop in the number of pages in either Google or Yahoo. I've checked with our dev team and there have been no significant changes to the sitemap or robots file. Has anybody seen anything like this before, or could give any insight into why it might be happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GBC0 -
Have you ever seen this 404 error: 'www.mysite.com/Cached' in GWT?
Google webmaster tools just started showing some strange pages under "not found" crawl errors. www.mysite.com/Cached www.mysite.com/item-na... <--- with the three dots, INSTEAD of www.mysite.com/item-name/ I have just 301'd them for now, but is this a sign of a technical issue? The site is php/sql and I'm doing the URL rewrites/301s etc in .htaccess. Thanks! -Dan EDIT: Also, wanted to add, there is no 'linked to' page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | evolvingSEO0 -
Do 404 Errors hurt SEO ?
I recently did a crawl test and it listed over 10,000 pages, but around 282 of them generated 404 errors (bad links) I'm wondering how much this hurts overall SEO and if its something I should focus on fixing asap ? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RagingBull0