Do you add 404 page into robot file or just add no index tag?
-
Hi,
got different opinion on this so i wanted to double check with your comment is.
We've got /404.html page and I was wondering if you would add this page to robot text so it wouldn't be indexed or would you just add no index tag? What would be the best approach?
Thanks!
-
Hello Rubix,
Saijo gave you some great advice, but I'm concerned about the fact that you have that page in the first place, and that it produces those URL parameters. It suggests to me that instead of showing a 404 error on the contact-office.aspx page (assuming that pages doesn't exist on that URL) you are redirecting the user who tries to access that URL to the /404.html page (e.g. /404.html?aspxerrorpath=/contact-office.aspx).
Typically you want the 404 http status code to show on the URL the user is trying to unsuccessfully access. In this case instead of redirecting them to your "404 page URL" you would want to show your customized 404 message (and ensure it returns a 404 status code, use this tool) on www.yourdomain.com/contact-office.aspx.
I hope this makes sense to you. If not, feel free to ask for clarification.
-
404 are OK on your site just make sure you send the proper 404 header response for the 404 page ... Google does NOT index 404 pages ( as long as it sends the 404 header response ) , so you don't need to block them via robots.txt or meta robots.
Infact GWT warns you about these if they are able to crawl the so called 404 pages that doesn't send a 404 header response , so I think its a good idea NOT to noindex them you will get the warning if something is wrong.
Google will only index your 404 if you don't do that..they call it soft 404 : https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/181708?hl=en
worth reading : http://moz.com/learn/seo/http-status-codes
-
Thanks Martijn,
I actually want to know what would you do for the 404 page itself. It is something like:
www.mainurl.com/404.html and for some reason this started to create some other links such as
www.mainrul.com/404.html?aspxerrorpath=/contact-office.aspx
Do you think I should add 404 page and subpages to Robot.txt ?
Thanks!
-
Hi Sida,
I would add a noindex to the page and as you also will return the 404 status code this is enough data for Google to tell not to index the page itself.
Hope this answers your question.
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 -
Password Protected Page(s) Indexed
Hi, I am wondering if my website can get a penalty if some password protected pages are showing up when I search on google: site:www.example.com/sub-group/pass-word-protected-page That shows that my password protected page was indexed either before or after adding the password protection. I've seen people suggest no indexing the page. Is that the best method to take care of this? What if we are planning on pushing the page live later on? All of these pages have no title tag, meta description, image alt text, etc. Should I add them for each page? I am wondering what is the best step, especially if we are planning on pushing the page(s) live. Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aua0 -
Google slow to index pages
Hi We've recently had a product launch for one of our clients. Historically speaking Google has been quick to respond, i.e when the page for the product goes live it's indexed and performing for branded terms within 10 minutes (without 'Fetch and Render'). This time however, we found that it took Google over an hour to index the pages. we found initially that press coverage ranked until we were indexed. Nothing major had changed in terms of the page structure, content, internal linking etc; these were brand new pages, with new product content. Has anyone ever experienced Google having an 'off' day or being uncharacteristically slow with indexing? We do have a few ideas what could have caused this, but we were interested to see if anyone else had experienced this sort of change in Google's behaviour, either recently or previously? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | punchseo0 -
Lately I have noticed Google indexing many files on the site without the .html extension
Hello, Our site, while we convert, remains in HTML 4.0. Fle names such as http://www.sample.com/samples/index.shtml are being picked up in the SERPS as http://www.sample.com/samples/ even when I use the "rel="canonical" tag and specify the full file name therein as recommended. The link to the truncated URL (http://www.sample.com/samples/) results in what MOZ shows as fewer incoming links than the full file name is shown as having incoming. I am not sure if this is causing a loss in placement (the MOZ stats are showing a decline of late), which I have seen recently (of course, I am aware of other possible reasons, such as not being in HTML5 yet). Any help with this would be great. Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gheh20130 -
Do internal links from non-indexed pages matter?
Hi everybody! Here's my question. After a site migration, a client has seen a big drop in rankings. We're trying to narrow down the issue. It seems that they have lost around 15,000 links following the switch, but these came from pages that were blocked in the robots.txt file. I was wondering if there was any research that has been done on the impact of internal links from no-indexed pages. Would be great to hear your thoughts! Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
What to do when you buy a Website without it's content which has a few thousand pages indexed?
I am currently considering buying a Website because I would like to use the domain name to build my project on. Currently that domain is in use and that site has a few thousand pages indexed and around 30 Root domains linking to it (mostly to the home page). The topic of the site is not related to what I am planing to use it for. If there is no other way, I can live with losing the link juice that the site is getting at the moment, however, I want to prevent Google from thinking that I am trying to use the power for another, non related topic and therefore run the risk of getting penalized. Are there any Google guidelines or best practices for such a case?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeAir0 -
Why the archive sub pages are still indexed by Google?
Why the archive sub pages are still indexed by Google? I am using the WordPress SEO by Yoast, and selected the needed option to get these pages no-index in order to avoid the duplicate content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelNewman1 -
Are 17000+ Not Found (404) Pages OK?
Very soon, our website will go a rapid change which would result in us removing 95% or more old pages (Right now, our site has around 18000 pages indexed). It's changing into something different (B2B from B2C) and hence our site design, content etc would change. Even our blog section would have more than 90% of the content removed. What would be the ideal scenario be? Remove all pages and let those links be 404 pages Remove all pages and 301 redirect them to the home page Remove all unwanted pages and 301 redirect them to a separate page explaining the change (Although it wouldn't be that relevant since our audience has completely changed)- I doubt it would be ideal since at some point, we'd need ot remove this page as well and again do another redirection
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jombay0