404 with a Javascript Redirect to the index page...
-
I have a client that is wanting me to issue a 404 on her links that are no longer valid to a custom 404, pause for 10 seconds, then rediirect to the root page (or whatever other redirect logic she wants)...to me it seems trying to game googlebot this way is a "bad idea"
Can anyone confirm/deny or offer up a better suggestion?
-
Thanks CleverPhD. Exactly what I was thinking, just wanted to have someone else confirm. Appreciate it!
-
Don't think you are gaming Googlebot. You are showing it a 404 (that is good) so GB knows that the page is dead. You are showing a custom page to the user that should let them know the page is dead. I think the custom page should say something like "Oops, this page no longer exists, redirecting you to another more helpful page in 10 seconds (click here if you are not redirected). You are
I might give it 15-20 seconds to make sure the person has time to read it.
You are showing the same thing to Gbot and the user, so no cloaking issues, i.e. you are not trying to game GB.
You may want to reconsider a 301 redirect instead. You then get the redirect automatically for the user (no pause or clicking needed) and the 301 tells google where the new page is etc. The only caveat to that, if you are redirecting a bunch of pages to the home page (or some other index page) - your solution above is probably better as you don't want to have a many to one situation with the 301s. Google prefers more of a one to one on 301 redirects - otherwise they may tag your 301 as a soft 404.
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
-
My blog is indexing only the archive and category pages
Hi there MOZ community. I am new to the QandA and have a question. I have a blog Its been live for months - but I can not get the posts to rank in the serps. Oddly only the categories rank. The posts are crawled it seems - but seen as less important for a reason I don't understand. Can anyone here help with this? See here for what i mean. I have had several wp sites rank well in the serps - and the posts do much better. Than the categories or archives - super odd. Thanks to all for help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | walletapp0 -
Google indexing wrong pages
We have a variety of issues at the moment, and need some advice. First off, we have a HUGE indexing issue across our entire website. Website in question: http://www.localsearch.com.au/ Firstly
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | localdirectories
In Google.com.au, if you search for 'plumbers gosford' (https://www.google.com.au/#q=plumbers+gosford), the wrong page appears - in this instance, the page ranking should be http://www.localsearch.com.au/Gosford,NSW/Plumbers I can see this across the board, across multiple locations. Secondly
Recently I've seen Google reporting in 'Crawl Errors' in webmaster tools URLs such as:
http://www.localsearch.com.au/Saunders-Beach,QLD/Electronic-Equipment-Sales-Repairs&Sa=U&Ei=xs-XVJzAA9T_YQSMgIHQCw&Ved=0CIMBEBYwEg&Usg=AFQjCNHXPrZZg0JU3O4yTGjWbijon1Q8OA This is an invalid URL, and more specifically, those query strings seem to be referrer queries from Google themselves: &Sa=U&Ei=xs-XVJzAA9T_YQSMgIHQCw&Ved=0CIMBEBYwEg&Usg=AFQjCNHXPrZZg0JU3O4yTGjWbijon1Q8OA Here's the above example indexed in Google: https://www.google.com.au/#q="AFQjCNHXPrZZg0JU3O4yTGjWbijon1Q8OA" Does anyone have any advice on those 2 errors?0 -
Do I need to re-index the page after editing URL?
Hi, I had to edit some of the URLs. But, google is still showing my old URL in search results for certain keywords, which ofc get 404. By crawling with ScremingFrog it gets me 301 'page not found' and still giving old URLs. Why is that? And do I need to re-index pages with new URLs? Is 'fetch as Google' enough to do that or any other advice? Thanks a lot, hope the topic will help to someone else too. Dusan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chemometec0 -
Indexing Dynamic Pages
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/search/Wiper+Blade/03300/C0047.oap?make=Honda&model=Accord&year=2005&vi=1430764 How is O'Reilly getting this page indexed? It shows up in organic results for [2005 honda accord windshield wiper size].
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Will redirecting poor traffic web pages increase web presence
A number of pages on my site have low traffic metrics. I intend to redirect poor performing pages to the most appropriate page with high traffic. Example
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
www.sampledomomain.co.uk/low-traffic-greyshoes
www.sampledomomain.co.uk/low-traffic-greenshoes
www.sampledomomain.co.uk/low-traffic-redshoes all of the above will be redirected to the following page:
www.sampledomomain.co.uk/high-traffic-blackshoes Question
Will carrying out htaccess redirects from the above example influence to web positioning of both www.sampledomomain.co.uk/high-traffic-blackshoes and www.sampledomomain.co.uk Regards Mark0 -
How to fix Invalid Product Page registering as Soft 404
Somehow with our site architecture Google is crawling URLS for products we no longer carry (there are no links to those pages so I am still trying to figure out how Google is finding them).Those URLS are being redirected to our invalid product page. That invalid product page is returning a 200 OK code, but according to Google it should be a 404 so we get a soft 404 error. Google is seeing all of the URLs that redirect to that page as soft 404's as well. The first solution I can think of is to create a custom 404 page that looks just like our site, says we don't have the page/product they are looking for, has a search bar, sends a 404 code, etc. Is this the right way to go? And it will probably take some time to implement so is there a quick fix we could do first?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ntsupply0 -
Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?
Hello here, here are my questions for you related to the canonical tag: 1. If I put online a new webpage with a canonical tag pointing to a different page, will this new page be indexed by Google and will I be able to find it in the index? 2. If instead I apply the canonical tag to a page already in the index, will this page be removed from the index? Thank you in advance for any insights! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Is 301 redirect suggested on pagination pages
Hi - Due to pagination the default page of site is coming in 2 url with - ?page=1/ sub-url and /sub-url is 301 a recommended solution due to this pagination urls Also - is it required to create separate title and meta description of every pagination page We are taking specifically in context of our discounts and offer section http://www.mycarhelpline.com/index.php?option=com_offers&view=list&Itemid=9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0