404 not found page appears as 200 success in Google Fetch. What to do to correct?
-
We have received messages in Google webmaster tools that there is an increase in soft 404 errors.
When we check the URLs they send to the 404 not found page:
For example, http://www.geographics.com/images/01904_S.jpg
redirects to http://www.geographics.com/404.shtml.
When we used fetch as Google, here is what we got: .
#1 Server Response: http://www.geographics.com/404.shtml
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 14:26:59 GMT
What is wrong and what shall we do?The soft 404 errors are mainly for images that no longer exist in the server.
Thanks!
-
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way, Alex. Unless the server returns an actual 404 response code in the header, search engines will not consider the page to be an error to be removed from their index. Even though the content of the page may look like an error page, the http response in the header is the only thing that determines whether the engines will treat it as a 404 error.
Paul
-
Your site is not handling "page not found" errors correctly, Madlena. Currently, when a user requests a URL that doesn't exist, your site is sending a 302 (temporary) redirect to an error page, but that error page's header is responding with a 200 status that means "page was found correctly".
You need to have your site's developer change that behaviour so that when a non-existent URL is requested, the server immediately returns a page that has a 404 not found header response (and no 302 redirect). This is necessary even if the page itself looks like a 404 error page.
ONLY by having the page return a 404 response code IN THE HEADER will that tell Google that the page doesn't actually exist and to drop the URL from the index. As Google themselves state - it’s not enough to just create a page that displays a 404 message. You also need to return the correct 404 or 410 HTTP response code.
Once this is configured properly, it's easier to keep track of these 404 errors so that you can fix them by manually 301-redirecting to a suitable page if there is one. (although this may not be the case with just images, it can be very useful in other cases.)
Hope that helps? If anything's not clear, just holler!
Paul
-
There's nothing to worry about. All Google is saying is that the image no longer exists and it's returning a 404 for that specific link "http://www.geographics.com/images/01904_S.jpg". When Google tries to fetch the broken URL, it's getting redirected to the 404 and it's saying that it's ok. We detect a 404 page and that fetches ok. However, the actual URL it was trying (the broken image) is not there. Google will automatically remove the 404s over time and there will be no negative impacts from this.
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
-
On our site by mistake some wrong links were entered and google crawled them. We have fixed those links. But they still show up in Not Found Errors. Should we just mark them as fixed? Or what is the best way to deal with them?
Some parameter was not sent. So the link was read as : null/city, null/country instead cityname/city
Technical SEO | | Lybrate06060 -
Structured data and Google+ Local business page are conflicting
Hi, A few (almost 8 now) months ago we have added structured data to our website. which according to the testing tool should work. (Our url: https://www.rezdy.com) However when searching for our company name, our old local business page from Google+ shows up. I have reached out to google to tell them that we aren't a local business anymore and want the data from the page to be removed. But this all takes painfully long. I want my search result to be shown like the large businesses (examples: Adroll, Hubspot), including logo, twitter feed etc. etc. Will this all work, if so, is there a way to speed up the process, any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | Niek_Dekker1 -
I broke Google! (random snippet appearing in non-personalized search)
Hello all, so either I broke Google or Google doesn't know how to index my page properly (onradpad.com/paymyrent). If you search "pay rent with credit card", whether you're logged in to Google or not, you'll see a snippet from our signup process (which is js) right under the ad slot in the serps (Awesome! You're signed up!) and it will repeat where my meta data should be. It's been like this for well over a month now and I cannot figure out how to get rid of it. Additionally, if you search for the branded title of the page "pay with radpad", it pulls language that's not on that page (perhaps from somewhere in the js signup form). Though if you search for "pay rent with radpad" you'll see what my meta description is supposed to look like in the serps. Any ideas as to what the heck is going on?
Technical SEO | | RadMatt0 -
Google dropping pages from SERPs even though indexed and cached. (Shift over to https suspected.)
Anybody know why pages that have previously been indexed - and that are still present in Google's cache - are now not appearing in Google SERPs? All the usual suspects - noindex, robots, duplication filter, 301s - have been ruled out. We shifted our site over from http to https last week and it appears to have started then, although we have also been playing around with our navigation structure a bit too. Here are a few examples... Example 1: Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149002-memory-drawings-there-is-no-perfect-place SERP (1): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place SERP (2): https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=memory+drawings+there+is+no+perfect+place+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com Example 2: SERP: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=deaf+center+recount+site%3Awww.normanrecords.com Live URL: https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount- Cached copy: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.normanrecords.com/records/149001-deaf-center-recount- These are pages that have been linked to from our homepage (Moz PA of 68) prominently for days, are present and correct in our sitemap (https://www.normanrecords.com/catalogue_sitemap.xml), have unique content, have decent on-page optimisation, etc. etc. We moved over to https on 11 Aug. There were some initial wobbles (e.g. 301s from normanrecords.com to www.normanrecords.com got caught up in a nasty loop due to the conflicting 301 from http to https) but these were quickly sorted (i.e. spotted and resolved within minutes). There have been some other changes made to the structure of the site (e.g. a reduction in the navigation options) but nothing I know of that would cause pages to drop like this. For the first example (Memory Drawings) we were ranking on the first page right up until this morning and have been receiving Google traffic for it ever since it was added to the site on 4 Aug. Any help very much appreciated! At the very end of my tether / understanding here... Cheers, Nathon
Technical SEO | | nathonraine0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content > Wordpress Comments Page
Hello Moz Community, I've create a campaign in Moz and received hundreds of errors, regarding "Duplicate Page Content". After some review, I've found that 99% of the errors in the "Duplicate Page Content" report are occurring due to Wordpress creating a new comment page (with the original post detail), if a comment is made on a blog post. The post comment can be displayed on the original blog post, but also viewable on a second URL, created by Wordpress. http://www.Example.com/example-post http://www.Example.com/example-post/comment-page-1 Anyone else experience this issue in Wordpress or this same type of report in Moz? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | DomainUltra0 -
After I 301 redirect duplicate pages to my rel=canonical page, do I need to add any tags or code to the non canonical pages?
I have many duplicate pages. Some pages have 2-3 duplicates. Most of which have Uppercase and Lowercase paths (generated by Microsoft IIS). Does this implementation of 301 and rel=canonical suffice? Or is there more I could do to optimize the passing of duplicate page link juice to the canonical. THANK YOU!
Technical SEO | | PFTools0 -
Google Cache is not showing in my page
Hello Everyone, I have issue in my Page, My category page (http://www.bannerbuzz.com/custom-vinyl-banners.html) is regular cached in past, but before sometime it can't show the cached result in SERP and not show in cached result , I have also fetch this link in google web master, but can't get the result, it is showing following message. 404. That’s an error. The requested URL /search?q=cache%3A http%3A//www.bannerbuzz.com/custom-vinyl-banners.html was not found on this server. That’s all we know. My category page rank is 2 and its keyword is on first in google.com, so i am little bit worried about this page cache issue, Can someone please tell me why is this happening? Is this a temporary issue? Help me to solve out this cache issue and once again my page will regularly cache in future. Thanks
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Descriptions missing from rankings associated with Google Place pages.
Can anyone help me figure out why my rankings that are associated with Google Place pages are missing descriptions? I have a number one result for the top searched keyword in my category but it just doesn't look the same without a description and I'm sure it's affecting CTR too.
Technical SEO | | glideagency0