Dead links-urls
-
What is the quickest way to get Google to clean up dead
link? I have 74,000 dead links reported back, i have added a robot txt to
disallow and added on Google list remove from my webmaster tool 4 months ago.
The same dead links also show on the open site explores.Thanks
-
thank you 410 was what i needed.
-
I had 3 inexperience developers, who did not how to write
the urls so they created many different versions. It is hard work out which is
the right version. I also have someone like BT after leavening there service 2
years ago they still seem to index my old links even though my domain is not
with them. They are all for 404 pages. -
I had 3 inexperience developers, who did not how to write
the urls so they created many different versions. It is hard work out which is
the right version. I also have someone like BT after leavening there service 2
years ago they still seem to index my old links even though my domain is not
with them. They are all for 404 pages. -
Can you offer clarification as to what you view as a "dead link"?
If you mean a link to a page on your site which no longer exists, then your options are as follows:
-
take John's advice and 301 the link to the most relevant page on your site
-
allow the link to 404. 404 errors are a natural part of the internet. You should be sure to have the most helpful 404 page possible. Include your site's normal navigation, a search box, most popular articles, etc.
Blocking pages in robots.txt is usually a bad idea and is more likely to add to the problem rather then fix it. If you do not block the page in robots.txt, Google would then crawl the page, see the error and remove it from their index. Because you block the page they can no longer view the page so they will likely leave it in for longer.
Google normally promptly removes web pages submitted with the URL Removal Tool. The tool is designed to remove pages which can damage your site or others. For example, if confidential information was accidentally published. It is not designed to be used to remove 74k pages because you decided to remove them from your website.
If these dead links are simply pages you removed from your site, I advise you to remove the robots.txt block and then decide to 301 them or allow them to 404. Google should then clean up the links within 30-60 days.
If you want to speed up the process as much as possible, there is one other step you can take. Set a 410 (Gone) code for the pages. When Google receives a 404 response, they are unsure if the page is simply temporarily unavailable so they keep it in the index. If they receive a 410 response, you are telling Google the page is GONE and they can update their index faster.
-
-
Are the links 404 pages or just expired content?
-
The links are index, i need them really cleaned up, not a
redirect, and users/customers find it frustrating -
You could try setting up a 301 redirect in htaccess.
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
-
Recovering rankings after a botched url change
Hi there, I have for a long time had a bicycle maintenance website at madegood.org. Over the years the film branch of this business has taken off and moved in a slightly different direction, so I thought in March I decided to move madegood.org to madegoobikes.com, and create a new website for my film business at madegood.com. I thought I did a good job of telling google about my change of domain, but my rankings completely died, so about a month I moved madegoodbikes.com back to madegood.org. So far I haven't seen any sign of a recovery in my rankings, I'm getting almost no visits. I've check all my top pages on OSE and everything seems to be in place. https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/pages?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.madegood.org%2F&no_redirects=0&sort=page_authority&filter=all&page=1 Is it normal to wait over a month for my rankings to recover, or is there anything else I should be doing? Any tips/ideas/advice whatsoever will of huge help!
Moz Pro | | madegood0 -
Block Moz (or any other robot) from crawling pages with specific URLs
Hello! Moz reports that my site has around 380 duplicate page content. Most of them come from dynamic generated URLs that have some specific parameters. I have sorted this out for Google in webmaster tools (the new Google Search Console) by blocking the pages with these parameters. However, Moz is still reporting the same amount of duplicate content pages and, to stop it, I know I must use robots.txt. The trick is that, I don't want to block every page, but just the pages with specific parameters. I want to do this because among these 380 pages there are some other pages with no parameters (or different parameters) that I need to take care of. Basically, I need to clean this list to be able to use the feature properly in the future. I have read through Moz forums and found a few topics related to this, but there is no clear answer on how to block only pages with specific URLs. Therefore, I have done my research and come up with these lines for robots.txt: User-agent: dotbot
Moz Pro | | Blacktie
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 My questions: 1. Are the above lines correct and would block Moz (dotbot and rogerbot) from crawling only pages that have numberOfStars=0 parameter in their URLs, leaving other pages intact? 2. Do I need to have an empty line between the two groups? (I mean between "Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0" and "User-agent: rogerbot")? (or does it even matter?) I think this would help many people as there is no clear answer on how to block crawling only pages with specific URLs. Moreover, this should be valid for any robot out there. Thank you for your help!0 -
Getting a URL Unaccessible on the page grader
I'm optimizing a site for a financial advisor, here is the site: http://www.mattkeenancfp.com I am getting the message "that URL is unaccessible" when I try to use the on-page grader. This is an emerald website too, I'm not sure if that has any effect on anything though.
Moz Pro | | ryanbilak0 -
Is it possible to track and rank internal links?
Trying to create my cornerstone pages and I'd like to see which pages have the most internal links already to get started. Is there a tool for this?
Moz Pro | | hyperthalamus0 -
MozTrust suddenly dropped to zero. Link data now unavailable???
I'm running an SEOMoz campaign for a small site to monitor some tweaks I've made and testing new things out. Over a year or so the changes were great - organic traffic was rising, domain metrics were too. Then in October 2012 domain trust, Moztrust and all other link metrics went to zero. There's no data in OSE for this particular small site and as far as I can tell, no impact on search. The limited number of inbound links all appear to be intact and there's no reason why the site would be hit by Panda/Penguin style updates. Why has this sudden loss of data occurred? Is the site no longer in SEOMoz's databases? Without any link data it's difficult to tell why this has happened. If it is no longer in the Moz database, how do I get it back - that data was useful!
Moz Pro | | StevieCC0 -
Looking For URL Anchor Text Metrics Definitions
Running some keyword difficulty reports that are showing some interesting data around URL Anchor Text Metrics. But ti fully understand them, I need some definitions, which I cannot find anyone. So can someone point me to definitions of these terms: Exact Anchor Text Links % Links w/ Exact Anchor Text Linking Root Domains w/ Exact Anchor Text % Linking Root Domains w/ Exact Anchor Text Partial Anchor Text Links % Links w/ Partial Anchor Text Partial Anchor Text Root Doms. % Linking Root Domains w/ Partial Anchor Text Also, if say Exact Anchor Text Links is bolded purple, that means that URL has more Exact Anchor Text Links than any other URL in the report. Is that correct? Thanx David
Moz Pro | | BraveheartDesign0 -
Compare link metrics - What time frame is this in?
Hi, I'm comparing three sites and one of them I know is quite popular however a few of the social statistics are puzzling me; they've got a small amount of Facebook likes and times shared on twitter - Which just can't be right if it's all time. What's the time frame of this data? The last three months or? Thanks, Dan
Moz Pro | | Sparkstone0 -
How do I delete a url from a keyword campaign
I have a couple of urls that are associated with the keywords in my campaign. They are no longer valid so how do I remove them?
Moz Pro | | PerriCline0