All pages were returning 404 for an hour. Will it impact the SERPS?
-
Hi,
Due to a bug in my website system, all the pages were returning an 404 default page for a period of 1 hour. Can this event impact the SERPs of this site? (the site is heavily visited, more than 500k users coming from google every day, so I assume google crawls my pages every moment)
-
If it was just an hour I don't think you have anything to worry about. In the future you may want to look into serving a 500 code instead when the site goes down.
-
Hi,
The GWT crawl errors section is now showling lots of my pages that were affected with the 404 error code. But these pages (most of them) are still in the serps. It seems their position were not affected.
-
Beyond the crawl... if a user is searching via key term to your site and the user gets a an error, that can certainly have an impact. You mentioned 500K Google search users could be impacted, so I would not be surprised if you don't notice a bounce. Moving forward, you may want to consider a Content Distribution Network service. If your main site goes down, the cached site can still be accessed by users. With the amount of traffic you mentioned, you'll need to do some research on this, but it may be a way to mitigate this risk in the future. Best of luck.
-
Dear Lucas,
it all depends on the fact if Google/Bing visited/crawled your website in that specific hour. If your website is receiving 500K visitors each day from Google and your websites spits out 404 pages for just an hour I don't think it will impact the rankings at all.
A client website of mine receives about 20K visitors each day, same sort of problem, due to a mistake he made his homepage was shut down for 2 days, Google bot had visited 2 times but the rankings were the same and webmaster central even gave us a notice of the problem.
I think you should be just fine.
What if the website of microsoft went offline due to a server error, electric pulse or something like that, i don't think that will impact their rankings at all.
just my 2 cents on the matter
Regards
Jarno
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
-
COVID-19 Impacts on Traffic?
How many people here have witnessed some decline in traffic due to pandemic..? It's a thought that since people all around the world are in home and the usage of internet has increased a great deal the traffic on sites should also increase but that is not the case with me on different websites in past 3 weeks... How many people have witnessed the traffic difference ever since the pandemic started or from start of the month of March..? Share your thoughts.
Search Behavior | | asifseo0981 -
SERP with no "www"
I have noticed that Google SERP without login is showing the domains without " www " - all of them. Have you seen this too? What does it mean for us?
Search Behavior | | Elchanan0 -
Google site: search showing twice amount of indexed pages. why?
I have around 50k pages indexed on my site but when I do a google site: of my site it shows around 100k pages indexed. Why is it showing so much more? It is also only showing around 700 pages indexed in my web masters account for the site. Background: We have a custom site map being generated automatically. Let me know if you would like more info, Thanks.
Search Behavior | | Nicktaylor10 -
Page ranking in .com but not in .co.uk
Hi there, I tried to search the Q&A but couldn't find any answers to my issue. We have a page that is ranking #2 for the term "translation memory" in google.com, but it doesn't show in Google.co.uk. This has been like this for weeks now. We are not targeting any specific country in GWT. Does anyone know a possible explanation for this? Thank you.
Search Behavior | | SDLOnlineChannel0 -
Google Analytics: advanced segment for hour of day
Cioa from 17 Degrees C cloudy Wetherby UK 🙂 In Google analytics I want to report specifically on Blackberry Mobile traffic next to hour if the day. Whilst this customised report I ripped off did the job @ http://bit.ly/hourdays I only resorted to this after battling with advanced segments thinking I could do the same thing. So my question is please how can I get this report http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/hrs-day-examplecopy_zps4f15d4a1.jpg by building it via advanced segments and not ripping off via http://bit.ly/hourdays Grazie tanto,
Search Behavior | | Nightwing
David0 -
Hi guys.. post-penguin my website coming in and out of serps every other day... what reason for that? ie. #11 --> #300+
We had one of the pre-penguin "unnatural links " messages in WMT - then Penguin hit April 24th/25th.. wee then set to work on Link profile... since 19th May we have had numerous search phrases come 'back' into rank pre-penguin for a day ie.. #5 - #10 and then drop the next.. ie 300+ this has been happening across a wide range of key phrases.... in fact it may well be that the key phrases are added to the serps 'briefly' or for a set amount of time... but our ranking checker checks daily so while it appears to be every other day in and out there may be another pattern... but the question is What is Google doing here and Why? any suggestions?
Search Behavior | | Geminineil1 -
Home page (s) deindexed
Ok odd one. 2 sites hosted on go daddy, neither sites has any cause for concern. But both sites have had there home pages deindexed or - 10000 penalty for no reason. We do the SEO for 1 site and not for the other. The server is shared with go daddy no idea on how many other 3rd party sites are on it. I've filed a reinclusion request for both sites. Any help is more than welcome.
Search Behavior | | therealmarkhall0 -
Paid search impact on Organic Search traffic - Is it in the positive side or negative side?
Recently came across an article stating that Paid search may affect traffic through Organic search. Did anyone have similar experience?
Search Behavior | | gmk15670