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.
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 Indexing Of Pages As HTTPS vs HTTP
We recently updated our site to be mobile optimized. As part of the update, we had also planned on adding SSL security to the site. However, we use an iframe on a lot of our site pages from a third party vendor for real estate listings and that iframe was not SSL friendly and the vendor does not have that solution yet. So, those iframes weren't displaying the content. As a result, we had to shift gears and go back to just being http and not the new https that we were hoping for. However, google seems to have indexed a lot of our pages as https and gives a security error to any visitors. The new site was launched about a week ago and there was code in the htaccess file that was pushing to www and https. I have fixed the htaccess file to no longer have https. My questions is will google "reindex" the site once it recognizes the new htaccess commands in the next couple weeks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vikasnwu1 -
Google does not want to index my page
I have a site that is hundreds of page indexed on Google. But there is a page that I put in the footer section that Google seems does not like and are not indexing that page. I've tried submitting it to their index through google webmaster and it will appear on Google index but then after a few days it's gone again. Before that page had canonical meta to another page, but it is removed now.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | odihost0 -
Redirected Old Pages Still Indexed
Hello, we migrated a domain onto a new Wordpress site over a year ago. We redirected (with plugin: simple 301 redirects) all the old urls (.asp) to the corresponding new wordpress urls (non-.asp). The old pages are still indexed by Google, even though when you click on them you are redirected to the new page. Can someone tell me reasons they would still be indexed? Do you think it is hurting my rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | phogan0 -
Is a 301 Redirect and a Canonical Tag on Uppercase to Lowercase Pages Correct?
We have a medium size site that lost more than 50% of its traffic in July 2013 just before the Panda rollout. After working with a SEO agency, we were advised to clean up various items, one of them being that the 10k+ urls were all mixed case (i.e. www.example.com/Blue-Widget). A 301 redirect was set up thereafter forcing all these urls to go to a lowercase version (i.e. www.example.com/blue-widget). In addition, there was a canonical tag placed on all of these pages in case any parameters or other characters were incorporated into a url. I thought this was a good set up, but when running a SEO audit through a third party tool, it shows me the massive amount of 301 redirects. And, now I wonder if there should only be a canonical without the redirect or if its okay to have tens of thousands 301 redirects on the site. We have not recovered yet from the traffic loss yet and we are wondering if its really more of a technical problem than a Google penalty. Guidance and advise from those experienced in the industry is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ABK7170 -
Can we retrieve all 404 pages of my site?
Hi, Can we retrieve all 404 pages of my site? is there any syntax i can use in Google search to list just pages that give 404? Tool/Site that can scan all pages in Google Index and give me this report. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Should pages of old news articles be indexed?
My website published about 3 news articles a day and is set up so that old news articles can be accessed through a "back" button with articles going to page 2 then page 3 then page 4, etc... as new articles push them down. The pages include a link to the article and a short snippet. I was thinking I would want Google to index the first 3 pages of articles, but after that the pages are not worthwhile. Could these pages harm me and should they be noindexed and/or added as a canonical URL to the main news page - or is leaving them as is fine because they are so deep into the site that Google won't see them, but I also won't be penalized for having week content? Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Number of Indexed Pages are Continuously Going Down
I am working on online retail stores. Initially, Google have indexed 10K+ pages of my website. I have checked number of indexed page before one week and pages were 8K+. Today, number of indexed pages are 7680. I can't understand why should it happen and How can fix it? I want to index maximum pages of my website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Is 404'ing a page enough to remove it from Google's index?
We set some pages to 404 status about 7 months ago, but they are still showing in Google's index (as 404's). Is there anything else I need to do to remove these?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0