Do search engines crawl links on 404 pages?
-
I'm currently in the process of redesigning my site's 404 page. I know there's all sorts of best practices from UX standpoint but what about search engines? Since these pages are roadblocks in the crawl process, I was wondering if there's a way to help the search engine continue its crawl.
Does putting links to "recent posts" or something along those lines allow the bot to continue on its way or does the crawl stop at that point because the 404 HTTP status code is thrown in the header response?
-
Okay, thanks Alan!
-
Hi Brad
Sorry I have only just come back to you - it was late night here in the UK, but it looks like Alan has already answered your question
Have you tested your 404 page with fetch as Google in webmaster tools - you should see that it can see the links on your 404 page and as such will continue crawling them as Alan has said.
So what is a benefit to a user will also be a benefit to Google crawling your site in my opinion
-
Sorry, yes, it should crawl the links - they used to do that.
But you can prove it to yourself, by doing what I said - and then report back.
-
Yes it will continue crawling or yes it will stop the crawl?
-
Yes and you can test it by creating a page that is linked from nowhere else and then check your logs or analytics
-
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the reply. I'm aware of all the best practice stuff but thanks for sending through. It didn't quite answer my question so let me rephrase...
Will a bot follow a hyperlink (like the example below) on a 404 page or will it stop the crawl on that page (not on the whole site) because the header response code is a 404?
-
Hi Brad
Firstly it is great from a usability point of view to have a custom 404 page and I would link it to your most popular content and maybe add a search feature on the page for your site to help find the content that is missing. I have come across some nice 404s that actually have very concise sitemap in order to help the visitor navigate the site.In order to prevent Google from indexing your 404 page you need to make sure it returns an actuall 404 HTTP status code.
In order to understand how Goolgebot crawls your site I would look at the following post from Google themselves - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182072?hl=en
Rather than being concerned about a 404 page having links on to keep the crawl going make sure you have an XML sitemap that you have submitted to Google via Webmaster Tools as this will help your crawl process.
Googlebot alots a set amount of time to crawling your site and it doesn't just stop crawling because it encounters a 404 error. However make sure that you monitor Google Webmaster Tools and take care of any reported 404s with 301 redirects for instance if the page has changed location. You will notice that Googlebot reports 404 erros on the days it finds them and these can often be multiple 404 errors encountered in one visit to your site by Googlebot. Keeing an eye on this and making sure you keep it updated will make your site as crawl efficient as possible which is clearly what you are after - as we all are
I thought this would also be interesting reading in relation to this - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html
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
-
Webshop landing pages and product pages
Hi, I am doing extensive keyword research for the SEO of a big webshop. Since this shop sells technical books and software (legal books, tax software and so on), I come across a lot of very specific keywords for separate products. Isn't it better to try and rank in the SERP's with all the separate product pages, instead of with the landing (category) pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Value in .EDU Link When Listed on Internship Offered Page
My company is looking to hire an Intern and a university - ".edu" - has including the job description on a page with list of "Available Internship", which includes a list of 100 other companies looking for an Intern. Our profile includes a link to our homepage like all other listings. Question: do we know search engines will give zero value to such link as they can tell it is an Internship posting page or is there a good chance it will actually be quite a valuable link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Best way to remove low quality paginated search pages
I have a website that has around 90k pages indexed, but after doing the math I realized that I only have around 20-30k pages that are actually high quality, the rest are paginated pages from search results within my website. Every time someone searches a term on my site, that term would get its own page, which would include all of the relevant posts that are associated with that search term/tag. My site had around 20k different search terms, all being indexed. I have paused new search terms from being indexed, but what I want to know is if the best route would be to 404 all of the useless paginated pages from the search term pages. And if so, how many should I remove at one time? There must be 40-50k paginated pages and I am curious to know what would be the best bet from an SEO standpoint. All feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Links to images on a page diluting page value?
We have been doing some testing with additional images on a page. For example, the page here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/2550/sukhoi-su-27-flanker-package-for-fsx/ Notice the images under the heading Images/Screenshots After adding these images, we noticed a ranking drop for that page (-27 places) in the SERPS. Could the large amount of images - in particular the links on the images (links to the larger versions) be causing it to dilute the value of the actual page? Any suggestions, advice or opinions will be much appreciated.0 -
Google places page related places links to competitor
I noticed on a lot of Google places pages i create for my clients Google seems to put related places links at the bottom of the page which links directly to their competitors. how can i remove control or avoid these links been placed? Also any tips on improving the places page would be greatly appreciated thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
Soft Hyphenation: Influence on Search Engines
Does anyone have experience on soft hyphenation and its effects on rankings? We are planning to use in our company blog to improve the layout. Currently, every word above 4 syllable will be soft hyphenated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zeepartner
This seems to render okay in all browsers, but it might be a problem with IE9... In HTML 5, the "" soft hyphenation seems to be replaced with the <wbr> Tag (http://www.w3schools.com/html5/tag_wbr.asp) and i don't find anything else about soft-hyphenation in the specs. Any experiences or opinions about this? Do you think it affects rankings if there are a lot of soft hyphens in the text? Does it still make sense to use or would you switch to <wbr> already?0 -
Generating 404 Errors but the Pages Exist
Hey I have recently come across an issue with several of a sites urls being seen as a 404 by bots such as Xenu, SEOMoz, Google Web Tools etc. The funny thing is, the pages exist and display fine. This happens on many of the pages which use the Modx CMS, but the index is fine. The wordpress blog in /blog/ all works fine. The only thing I can think of is that I have a conflict in the htaccess, but troubleshooting this is difficult, any tool I have found online seem useless. Have tried to rollback to previous versions but still does not work. Anyone had any experience of similar issues? Many thanks K.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Found0