404's in WMT are old pages and referrer links no longer linking to them.
-
Within the last 6 days, Google Webmaster Tools has shown a jump in 404's - around 7000. The 404 pages are from our old browse from an old platform, we no longer use them or link to them.
I don't know how Google is finding these pages, when I check the referrer links, they are either 404's themselves or the page exists but the link to the 404 in question is not on the page or in the source code. The sitemap is also often referenced as a referrer but these links are definitely not in our sitemap and haven't been for some time. So it looks to me like the referrer data is outdated. Is that possible?
But somehow these pages are still being found, any ideas on how I can diagnose the problem and find out how google is finding them?
-
How long ago did you switch platforms? It can take months for Google to come back around to a page that linked to your site. Page on your site will stay in the cache until a few passes.
When you switch, did you do any 301 redirects? Examine the back links to your domain - any that come from good pages should be redirected to the new URL. If not, they will be scooped up by active SEOs. (finding 404 links is a popular link building technique).
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633
If you know the links will be dead forever, try using a 410 response as it is supposed to make search engines drop the page faster.
http://www.seroundtable.com/404-410-google-15225.html (bottom)
Have you requested Google remove old directories/pages? If the content is gone and has no back links, try a removal request.
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1663427
-
Having a similar problem with a new site that was created by copying an old site in its entirety. Went through the trouble of cleaning everything up, having pages that were no longer relevant removed, fixed the sitemaps, etc. and now months later WMT showed me a spike of 404s for the old pages with the referrers as the XML sitemap and sitemap page... but they are definitely not be linked from there. I'm assuming there was some sort of hiccup with Google using an older, cached version of the sitemap to find these links.
I wound up just clearing the errors out of WMT and waiting to see if it will recrawl the error pages again. If Google continues to crawl them even though they aren't being linked to, then our next course of action was going to be 301ing them all just in case.
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
-
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 -
What's the best Blogging platform
A year ago an SEO specialist evaluated my Wordpress site and said she had seen lower rankings for Wordpress sites--in general. We moved our site off any cms and design in html 5. Our blog, however, is still on Wordpress. I'm thinking about moving to the Ghost platform b/c I only a blog. The drawbacks are one author, no recent post lists, no meta tags. Is it worth it to move the site off Wordpress. Will it affect my rankings much if I have great content? Does anyone have experience with or opinions on Ghost?
Technical SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
WebMaster Tools keeps showing old 404 error but doesn't show a "Linked From" url. Why is that?
Hello Moz Community. I have a question about 404 crawl errors in WebmasterTools, a while ago we had an internal linking problem regarding some links formed in a wrong way (a loop was making links on the fly), this error was identified and fixed back then but before it was fixed google got to index lots of those malformed pages. Recently we see in our WebMaster account that some of this links still appearing as 404 but we currently don't have that issue or any internal link pointing to any of those URLs and what confuses us even more is that WebMaster doesn't show anything in the "Linked From" tab where it usually does for this type of errors, so we are wondering what this means, could be that they still in google's cache or memory? we are not really sure. If anyone has an idea of what this errors showing up now means we would really appreciate the help. Thanks. jZVh7zt.png
Technical SEO | | revimedia1 -
Pages appear fine in browser but 404 error when crawled?
I am working on an eCommerce website that has been written in WordPress with the shop pages in E commerce Plus PHP v6.2.7. All the shop product pages appear to work fine in a browser but 404 errors are returned when the pages are crawled. WMT also returns a 404 error when ‘fetch as Google’ is used. Here is a typical page: http://www.flyingjacket.com/proddetail.php?prod=Hepburn-Jacket Why is this page returning a 404 error when crawled? Please help?
Technical SEO | | Web-Incite0 -
When testing the on page report I'm having a few problems
First of all, is this test checking my seo optimization over the whole website or just over one site: Ie. when I type in www.joelolson.ca...is it also checking sites like www.joelolson.ca/realtorresources... Secondly. I have found that it won't find specific websites on my page and says they can't be found when clearly they exist
Technical SEO | | JoelOlson0 -
Unnatural Link Warning No Longer Showing in GWT?
Hi, We recently took on a new client that had been hit by the recent Google updates. After having a really good look at their analytics and their link profile it looked like they had been hit with over-optimisation of anchor text. Over the last month or so we have been working to remove a pile of links that contain their main keyword starting with the easiest to remove and the lowest quality. At the same time we have been building links using sematic keywords and junk anchor text in a bid to dilute the ration of main anchor text within their profile. We have a timetable of tasks drawn-up which we are working through, at the end of the timetable when all tasks were complete we planned to write a very nice reconsideration request to Mr Google. I have logged in to Google Webmaster Tools this morning and I have noticed that the 'Unnatural Links' notice has been removed from that domain. Does anyone know if this signifies anything? We haven't sent a reconsideration request to google yet. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
Page rank 2 for home page, 3 for service pages
Hey guys, I have noticed with one of our new sites, the home page is showing page rank two, whereas 2 of the internal service pages are showing as 3. I have checked with both open site explorer and yahoo back links and there are by far more links to the home page. All quality and relevant directory submissions and blog comments. The site is only 4 months old, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the fact 2 of the lesser linked pages are showing higher PR? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nextman0 -
Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg
Technical SEO | | glennfriesen1