Hundreds Of 404s Best Dealt Wtih 301-Palooza?
-
Was looking at a site's webmaster tools where there are a few hundred 404s for a site. God only knows where all those urls came from or what they once were or what. Two questions;
-
How bad is all this for the site's overall ranking?
-
Should I just make sure they go nowhere and 301 them all to the homepage or some other possibly relevant page? Anything bad that could happen with 301ing all this away?
-
Also, the site has no sitemap submitted to Google. Any tips on that?
Thanks!
-
-
You're a genius! Thanks!!
-
"Remove Page From Search Results & Cache"
-
Hey Brent,
Following those steps, do I then choose:
"Remove Page From Search Results & Cache"
"Remove Page From Cache Only"
"Remove Directory"
-
Thanks, Brent!
-
I don't believe so.
-
Wow, one url at a time? Is there a bulk upload?
-
Google Webmaster Tools => Site Configuration => Crawler Access => Remove URL (tab)
-
Hey Brent,
Thanks for the message.
How do I remove them from the index?
Thanks!
-
Yes, so many 404's is bad, but it all depends on how long Google has seen them. If too many you may find yourself in Google's 3 month ranking hole. First you should set up a 301 and try to redirect as many as possible to relevant pages.
Second, use Google Webmaster Tools and start removing the bad urls from their index.
Might be a lot of work right now, but you have to clean them up asap.
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
-
301 Redirects a Year Later
I inherited the digital maintenance of a website that was relaunched a year ago. In looking at Google Analytics, organic search a year later is still down 33%. I fear they did not install 301 Redirects but can't really get a specific answer from them. Is it possible to install them a year later to help with Google indexing and get back some of the organic traffic?
Technical SEO | | stansamples0 -
301 - Specific Domain
In Google our main website page url is <cite class="_Rm">www.wheelchairparts.com</cite> it has 25 root domain links & PA 34. When you go to our website from there, the homepage url is http://www.wheelchairparts.com/store/pc/home.asp it only has 3 root domain links & PA 27. Do I need to add a 301 Redirect here? What kind of redirect is on it now? Thanks, - Mike Bean
Technical SEO | | Mike.Bean0 -
301 redirects without .htaccess
I have a client that recently moved from an old ZenCart e-commerce site to Volusion. The domain name did not change. We need to redirect a bunch of the old URLs; however, Volusion's redirect tool does not work for URLS with "?" . The old ZenCart structure is: http://www.mydomain.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=563 Volusion is a hosted platform and we do not have access to the .htaccess file. Any suggestions on a workaround? Thanks!Nancy <colgroup><col width="960"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | NancyVPS
| |0 -
Rank a site that was 301'd
We had a customer that had 2 sites. They left us, and 301'd site A to site B. Things didn't go well. Now, a year later they want to use us again. Ideally, I would undo the 301. Has anyone done this? Would I be better off starting with a new domain? If you've done it, how long before it started to rank like you expected/hoped?
Technical SEO | | TimColeman0 -
How to know what pages are 301 redirecting to me?
Hi! It is easy to know if somebody is spam linking your website, looking i.e., looking at open site explorer to analyse the links profile. But, is it possible to know if a competitor of mine is redirecting a bad domain to main with a 301 redirect, thus transfering any bad SEO reputation to me? Best Regards, Daniel
Technical SEO | | te_c0 -
Best practices for repetitive job postings
I have a client who is a recruiter for skilled trades jobs. They post quite a few jobs on their job board on a regular basis. They frequently have job postings that are very similar to older jobs or multiple current job postings that are similar to each other. Looking at their webmaster tools and site: command search in google, it does appear they have some duplicate content issues. We're thinking it's because of the similar job posts. What is the best practice for dealing with this? And is there any way to correct the situation so that the number of "omitted due to similarity" results declines? Thanks for you help!
Technical SEO | | PlusROI0 -
Massive amount of 404s after forum prune
So I pruned my vbulletin forum the other week and now webmaster tools detects over 4000 urls as not found. Is there a solution to this? Is this something that could negatively effect rankings? Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | TheTippingPoint0 -
Best blocking solution for Google
Posting this for Dave SottimanoI Here's the scenario: You've got a set of URLs indexed by Google, and you want them out quickly Once you've managed to remove them, you want to block Googlebot from crawling them again - for whatever reason. Below is a sample of the URLs you want blocked, but you only want to block /beerbottles/ and anything past it: www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/1 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/2 www.example.com/beers/brandofbeer/beerbottles/3 etc.. To remove the pages from the index should you?: Add the Meta=noindex,follow tag to each URL you want de-indexed Use GWT to help remove the pages Wait for Google to crawl again If that's successful, to block Googlebot from crawling again - should you?: Add this line to Robots.txt: DISALLOW */beerbottles/ Or add this line: DISALLOW: /beerbottles/ "To add the * or not to add the *, that is the question" Thanks! Dave
Technical SEO | | goodnewscowboy0