Hundreds Of 404s Best Dealt Wtih 301-Palooza?
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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;
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How bad is all this for the site's overall ranking?
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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?
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Also, the site has no sitemap submitted to Google. Any tips on that?
Thanks!
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You're a genius! Thanks!!
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"Remove Page From Search Results & Cache"
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Hey Brent,
Following those steps, do I then choose:
"Remove Page From Search Results & Cache"
"Remove Page From Cache Only"
"Remove Directory"
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Thanks, Brent!
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I don't believe so.
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Wow, one url at a time? Is there a bulk upload?
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Google Webmaster Tools => Site Configuration => Crawler Access => Remove URL (tab)
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Hey Brent,
Thanks for the message.
How do I remove them from the index?
Thanks!
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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.
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