404 Errors
-
Do 404 Errors really have a lot of impact on rankings and over all authority of the site with google? Say you have a site that all the pages have moved apart from the home page which is exactly the same before moving? So most of your pages are showing 404 errros.
-
Hi Adul,
Just to follow up on this in case you're wondering why the answer is being downvoted. Blocking the pages that 404 in robots.txt will only stop Google getting a 404 because they can't reach the page. Users will still get a 404 so this isn't ideal. Also, if you don't 301 redirect the old pages to the new one, you lose any equity that those pages built up over the years.
Hope that helps,
Craig
-
Go to google webmaster tools, > Crawl > Crawl Error .. Download all page
Open excel and paste notepad robots.txt
User-agent: *
disallow: /page1.html
Disallow: /page2.html -
If no one can access your site except for the home page, that is pretty bad.
As to rankings, look at it from a broad perspective. A user clicks a link in search results. That link goes to a 404. They immediately go back and find someone else's site or link to click on. Another user clicks another link for the same broken site. They get a 404 error and do the same thing. Google bot comes along and sees that the site in question has a very low on-page time, and users frequently leave and go somewhere else. They also see a large quanity of the pages dont work.
If you were Google, would you give that site much weight or credit? Or would you hand it to a site that works? I don't think they openly express that it can hurt you, or that they will hurt your ranking for having 404 errors. IMO they do, it's just not as transparent as the rest of the things they state to do to improve your ranking.
-
OP, your case is an extreme one in that every page on the site but the homepage 404s. That means you moved but didn't do any 301 redirects, so that's an issue.
But generally, 404s have no impact on your site's ranking and that's been stated on record multiple times.
-
Hi, the 404 errors are pretty bad and en user experience standpoint and so Google does not like them. During domain migrations, the most important aspect is to control the number of 404 errors to the possible extent if not possible to make them zero.
When pages are moved, you should go in for a one-to-one or page-to-page server-side, 301 permanent redirection from the old pages to the corresponding new locations so that the old pages do not end-up in 404 errors and with 301 in place, Google will know that the old pages are no more in force and that they have been replaced by the new corresponding destinations. This will also make the old ones replaced by the new ones in search engine indices.
So to conclude, 404 errors are bad from both, the users and the search engines.
Hope it helps my friend.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
Href Lang Errors
Hi Im getting href lang errors in my site audit for having no self referntial tags. I can't see anything wrong? Can anyone enlighten me 🙂 From this page ** http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/0-4-tonne-wll-6mm-single-leg-wire-rope-sling-580a078n**
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
I have 6 URL errors in GSC showing a 500 error code. How do I fix?
I am not sure how to fix some errors that are popping up in Google Search Console. The response codes showing are all: 500 error code I need some advice as to how to fix these. What are my options?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pmull0 -
Should I Keep adding 301s or use a noindex,follow/canonical or a 404 in this situation?
Hi Mozzers, I feel I am facing a double edge sword situation. I am in the process of migrating 4 domains into one. I am in the process of creating URL redirect mapping The pages I am having the most issues are the event pages that are past due but carry some value as they generally have one external followed link. www.example.com/event-2008 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 www.example.com/event-2007 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 www.example.com/event-2006 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 Again these old events aren't necessarily important in terms of link equity but do carry some and at the same time keep adding multiple 301s pointing to the same page may not be a good ideas as it will increase the page speed load time which will affect the new site's performance. If i add a 404 I will lose the bit of equity in those. No index,follow may work since it won't index the old domain nor the page itself but still not 100% sure about it. I am not sure how a canonical would work since it would keep the old domain live. At this point I am not sure which direction I should follow? Thanks for your answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Error reports showing pages that don't exist on website
I have a website that is showing lots of errors (pages that cannot be found) in google webmaster tools. I went through the errors and re-directed the pages I could. There are a bunch of remaining pages that are not really pages this is why they are showing errors. What's strange is some of the URL's are showing feeds which these were never created. I went into Google webmaster tools and looked at the remove URL tool. I am using this but I am confused if I need to be selecting "remove page from search results and cache" option or should I be selecting this other option "remove directory" I am confused on the directory. I don't want to accidentally delete core pages of the site from the search engines. Can anybody shed some light on this or recommend which I should be selecting? Thank you Wendy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SOM240 -
Redirecting 404 pages
Hello,We have a wordpress site that has some "hidden" pages with weird URL's. Due to the way the site was built (not by us) if we setup our standard practice for 404 pages some site functionality will be lost.Standard Practice for 404's www.domain.com/fafsaf shows 404 error pageProposed solution:- www.domain.com/safaf >forwards to> www.domain.com/404 - shows 404 error page. Will this stop the search engines indexing the pages? - we have also amended the robots.txt to try and stop some pages being indexed but we still keep finding the odd little "hidden" page.The aim is to try and get all the search engines just to index the few simple pages on the sitemap instead of finding all these extra pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
404 Errors with my RSS Feed/sitemap
In my google webmasters I just started getting 404 errors that I'm not sure how to redirect. I'm getting quite a few that are ending in /feed/ for instance /nyc-accident-injury/feed/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jsmythd
contact-us-thank-you/feed/ and then also a problem with my sitemap I guess? With /site-map/?postsort=tags The domain is pulversthompson.com0 -
GWT Crawl Error Report Not Updating?
GWT's crawl error report hasn't updated for me since April 25. Crawl stats are updating normally, as are robots.txt and sitemap accesses. Is anyone else experiencing this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tonyperez0 -
Why are Pages returning 404 errors not being dropped?
Our webmaster tools continues to return anywhere upwards of 750 pages that have 404 errors. These are from pages of a previous site no longer used. However this was over 1 year ago these pages were dropped along with the 301 re-directs. Why is Google not clearing these from webmaster tools but re-listing them again after 3 month cycle? Is it because external sites have links to these pages? If so should I put a 301 in place (most of these site are forums and potentially dodgy directories etc from previous poor link building programs) or ask for a manual removal?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0