Does it matter? 404 v.s. 302 > Page Not Found
-
Hey Mozers,
What are your thoughts of this situation i'm stuck in all inputs welcome
I am in the middle of this massive domain migration to a new server. Also we are going to be having a very clean SEO friendly url structure. While I was doing some parsing and cleaning up some old urls I stumbled upon a strange situation on my website.
I have a bunch of "dead pages" and they are 302'd to a "page not found" probably a old mistake of one of the past developers. (To clarify the HTTP Status code is not 404)
Should I try to fight to get all these "dead pages" a 404 error code or could I just leave the temp redirect 302 > "page not found" ( even though I know for a fact theses pages are not going to turn on again)
-
Ya, that's a mess. Either 301 to a live page or let the 404 be delivered on its own.
-
Looks like my stystem is set up to 301 to a 404. Which do you think Google with honor? (the 301 or the 404)
Also wouldn't having a 301 to a 404 keep bots crawling our server because its a redirect instead of the server providing a 404 or 410
-
Depending upon how many you have (you said "a bunch"), there are multiple ways of fixing this.
If you are using a CMS, you can install a universal 404 handler, which will either direct a 404 page to the top level menu item of that group, or to the home page. If using a asp or html, I'm sure a decent developer could code one up for you.
If the dead pages are ranked (indexed) pages, I would make sure they forward to the new page that exists on your new server.
-
It sounds like they're 302'ing to a 200 instead of a 404 to a page that says, "page not found"... In that case, you should get them to be legitimate 404s or 410s. A custom 404 page would be a nice touch as well to help clean up the navigation.
By the time you migrate (via 301) you could point these to the most applicable section of your new site where they should have pointed on the old site and be pretty much done with your clean up.
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
-
Multiple links from same domain (different pages) considered in credibility of backlinks?
Hi, Let's say there are multiple backlinks from different pages of same domain to different pages of other domain like below: Website A: Page 1 -----------> Website B: Page 1 Website A: Page 2 -----------> Website B: Page 2 Do the pages of Website B pages will get backlinks authority equally or they don't get much backlinks impact as they have multiple backlinks from same domain? There were old school stories that Google ignores second link from same domain.....etc... So, please suggest on this. Thank you. Note: The question is NOT about content relevancy or domain authority score of the backlinks.
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
What happens when most of the website visitors end up at an "noindex" log-in page?
Hi all, As most of the users are visiting our website for log-in, we are planning to deindex login page. As they cannpt find it on SERP, they gonna visit our website and login; I just wonder what happens when most of the visitors just end up at homepage by browsing into an "noindex" page. Obviously it increases bounce rate and exit rate as they just gonna disappear. Is this going to push down us in rankings? What are the other concerns to check about? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Does Google’s Algorithm Populate Answer Boxes with Its Own Independent Research?
If you search 'best games to play for youtube' you get an answer box with answers pulled independently from the article at hand. Here's an image: http://imgur.com/a/S0j9B Here are all the games from my article, in the order in which they appear. Google's chosen games for Answer Box are bolded: Battlefield 1 Bloodborne GTA V FiFA 16 TrackMania Turbo Garry’s Mod League of Legends Call of Duty: Black Ops III Tom Clancy’s The Division Overwatch Just Cause 3 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Brawlhalla Rocket League Dark Souls III Unravel Firewatch GoldenEye 007 (this was put in as a joke, but coded as an H2 nonetheless) Destiny Dead by Daylight Fallout 4 Undertale No Man’s Sky Minecraft As you can see, Google is choosing which games to display to its searchers. My Crazy Egg data shows that these were not picked by click volume (each of these H2s are hyperlinked), which means Google must be using some other popularity metric, such as its own search volume data or external sales data. I wrote this up in a post on my site, for anybody who's curious.
Algorithm Updates | | Edward_Sturm1 -
The evolution of Google's 'Quality' filters - Do thin product pages still need noindex?
I'm hoping that Mozzers can weigh in with any recent experiences with eCommerce SEO..... I like to assume (perhaps incorrectly) that Google's 'Quality' filters (formerly known as Panda) have evolved with some intelligence since Panda first launched and started penalising eCommerce sites for having thin product pages. On this basis i'd expect that the filters are now less heavy handed and know that product pages with no or little product description on them are still a quality user experience for people who want to buy that product. Therefore my question is this...
Algorithm Updates | | QubaSEO
Do thin product pages still need noindex given that more often that not they are a quality search result for those using a product specific search query? Has anyone experienced penalty recently (last 12 months) on an ecommerce site because of a high number of thin product pages?0 -
On-Page Markup: Still a Worthwhile Practice?
So I have a question for the community that hopefully someone can help me with. Previously, whenever I created/worked on a website, when I would create or edit the content, I would bold the keywords, italicize certain items, add internal/external links and generally mark-up the content. More recently, however, I've noticed that both my client and many of their leading competitors have abandoned this practice. Now, it appears that all the text appears as plain text, there are rarely bold or italicized items and there does not seem to be as much emphasis on inserting internal/external links. While I understand the ladder to still be an effective/holistic approach to SEO, I'm wondering why the former (the bold, italicized, text variation) has gone by the wayside. So with that, is adding bold/italicized text still a worthwhile SEO technique and is it something I should continue applying to sites I work on? Please advise.
Algorithm Updates | | maxcarnage0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
After running a site analysis on here it has come up and said that I have a lot o pages with too many on page links and that this might be why the site is being penalized. Thing is I am not sure how to remedy this as one page that says it has 116 links is this one : http://www.whosjack.org/10-films-with-some-crazy-bitches/ Although there is only one link in the body Then again our home page has 165 http://www.whosjack.org which again it says is too many. The thing is is that surely it doesn't count on links all over the page as other wise every news homepage would be penalised? For example what would happen here on this home page? : http://www.dazeddigital.com/ Can anyone help me see what I am missing? Are there possible hidden links anywhere I should be looking for etc? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | luwhosjack0 -
Google has indexed a lot of test pages/junk from the development days.
With hind site I understand that this could have been avoided if robots.txt was configured properly. My website is www.clearvisas.com, and is indexed with both the www subdomain and with out. When I run site:clearvisas.com in Google I get 1,330 - All junk from the development days. But when I run site:www.clearvisas.com in Google I get 66 - these results all post development and more in line with what I wanted to be indexed. Will 1,330 junk pages hurt my seo? Is it possible to de-index them and should I? If the answer is yes to any of the questions how should I proceed? Kind regards, Fuad
Algorithm Updates | | Fuad_YK0 -
New linkbuilding: If networks are useless, and I need high volume through a 1-man team, what's the best option?
I work for an online retailer, and we have thousands of product pages and our vertical for content is brutal -- half of them are owned by our competitors. Are there any new linkbuilding strategies that can be done through a 1-man team? I'm not talking about bots or traditional link networks. Our current strat revolves around the following: 1. Link prospecting through buzzstream tools and singular contacts 2. Finding bloggers/vloggers, sending product and having them send backlinks to our homepage level with their reviews (slow turnaround, low juice). 3. Syndicating our videos through multiple avenues. 4. Being active on social. We need to gain more authority outside of simple content building. Are there any alternatives to link networks to optimize build outs via a 1-man team? Many thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | eugeneku0
