Just validating a theory I have about why Google is Soft 404ing some of my doctor pages.
-
As of June 1 doctor pages on our website that say "No ratings are available yet" are being Soft 404ed in our Google Console.
We suspect the issue is that wording, due to this post. https://www.contentkingapp.com/academy/index-coverage/faq/submitted-soft-404/
Just wondering if anyone with more expertise than me on 404s or local seo can validate that it is likely this issue.
Some examples:
https://www.nebraskamed.com/doctors/neil-s-kalsi
https://www.nebraskamed.com/doctors/leslie-a-eiland
https://www.nebraskamed.com/doctors/david-d-ingvoldstad -
@terentyev Thanks!
-
@patrick_at_nebraska_medicine I confirm that your assumption about the essence of soft 404s is correct. I am experiencing the same with several pages in online travel (eg. destination pages that have zero search results). To fix it, you have to be creative and find a way to display some content on these zero-ratings pages. I am afraid, that just removing the "no ratings are available" wording will not solve the problem.
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
-
Why is my inner pages ranking higher than main page?
Hi everyone, for some reason lately i have discovered that Google is ranking my inner pages higher than the main subfolder page. www.domain.com/subfolder --> Target page to be ranked
Technical SEO | | davidboh
www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus ---> page that is currently ranking Also in the SERP most of the time, it is showing both links in this manner. www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus
-----------www.domain.com/subfolder Thanks in advance.1 -
Over 40+ pages have been removed from the indexed and this page has been selected as the google preferred canonical.
Over 40+ pages have been removed from the indexed and this page has been selected as the google preferred canonical. https://studyplaces.com/about-us/ The pages affected by this include: https://studyplaces.com/50-best-college-party-songs-of-all-time-and-why-we-love-them/ https://studyplaces.com/15-best-minors-for-business-majors/ As you can see the content on these pages is totally unrelated to the content on the about-us page. Any ideas why this is happening and how to resolve.
Technical SEO | | pnoddy0 -
Does adding subcategory pages to an commerce site limit the link juice to the product pages?
I have a client who has an online outdoor gear company. He mostly sells high end outdoor gear (like ski jackets, vests, boots, etc) at a deep discount. His store currently only resides on Ebay. So we're building him an online store from scratch. I'm trying to determine the best site architecture and wonder if we should include subcategory pages. My issue is that I think the subcategory pages might be good from a user experience, but it'll add an additional layer between the homepage and the product pages. The problem is that I think a lot of user's might be searching for the product name to see if they can find a better deal, and my client's site would be perfect for them. So I really want to rank well for the product pages, but I'm nervous that the subcategory pages will limit the link juice of the product pages. Home --> SubCategory --> Product List --> Product Detail Home --> Men's Ski Clothing --> Men's Ski Jack --> North Face Mt Everest Jacket Should I keep the SubCategory page "Men's Ski Clothing" if it helps usability? On a separate note, the SubCategory pages would have some head keyword terms, but I don't think that he could rank well for these terms anytime soon. However, they would be great pages / terms to rank for in the long term. Should this influence the decision?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Please advise.
My beta site (beta.website.com) has been inadvertently indexed. Its cached pages are taking traffic away from our real website (website.com). Should I just "NO INDEX" the entire beta site and if so, what's the best way to do this? Are there any other precautions I should be taking? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Does Google Still Pass Anchor Text for Multiple Links to the Same Page When Using a Hashtag? What About Indexation?
Both of these seem a little counter-intuitive to me so I want to make sure I'm on the same page. I'm wondering if I need to add "#s to my internal links when the page I'm linking to is already: a.) in the site's navigation b.) in the sidebar More specifically, in your experience...do the search engines only give credit to (or mostly give credit to) the anchor text used in the navigation and ignore the anchor text used in the body of the article? I've found (in here) a couple of folks mentioning that content after a hashtagged link isn't indexed. Just so I understand this... a.) if I were use a hashtag at the end of a link as the first link in the body of a page, this means that the rest of the article won't be indexed? b.) if I use a table of contents at the top of a page and link to places within the document, then only the areas of the page up to the table of contents will be indexed/crawled? Thanks ahead of time! I really appreciate the help.
Technical SEO | | Spencer_LuminInteractive0 -
Did Google just release another massive update in September?
Our number of external links has dropped by over 50% in mid-September! So far our domain authority hasn't been impacted and traffic is only slightly down. I did not hear of any major Google changes . . . did this happen to anyone else?
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Dynamic page
I have few pages on my site that are with this nature /locator/find?radius=60&zip=&state=FL I read at Google webmaster that they suggest not to change URL's like this "According to Google's Blog (link below) they are able to crawl the simplified dynamic URL just fine, and it is even encouraged to use a simple dynamic URL ( " It's much safer to serve us the original dynamic URL and let us handle the problem of detecting and avoiding problematic parameters. " ) _http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls.html _It can also actually lead to a decrease as per this line: " We might have problems crawling and ranking your dynamic URLs if you try to make your urls look static and in the process hide parameters which offer the Googlebot valuable information. "The URLs are already simplified without any extra parameters, which is the recommended structure from Google:"Does that mean I should avoid rewriting dynamic URLs at all?
Technical SEO | | ciznerguy
That's our recommendation, unless your rewrites are limited to removing unnecessary parameters, or you are very diligent in removing all parameters that could cause problems" I would love to get some opinions on this also please consider that those pages are not cached by Google for some reason.0 -
Existing Pages in Google Index and Changing URLs
Hi!! I am launching a newly recoded site this week and had a another noobie question. The URL structure has changed slightly and I have installed a 301 redirect to take care of that. I am wondering how Google will handle my "old" pages? Will they just fall out of the index? Or does the 301 redirect tell Google to rewrite the URLs in the index? I am just concerned I may see an "old" page and a "new" page with the same content in the index. Just want to make sure I have covered all my bases. Thanks!! Lynn
Technical SEO | | hiphound0