Google says 404s don't cause ranking drops, but what about a lot of them
-
Hello,
According to Google here, 404s don't cause rankings to go down. Our rankings are going down and we have about 50 or so 404s (though some may have been deindexed by now). We have about 300 main products and 9000 pages in general on this Ecommerce site.
There's no link equity gained by 301 redirecting the 404s. A custom 404 page has been made linking to the home page. There's nothing linking to the pages that are 404s
Provided that no more 404s are created, can I just ignore them and find the real reason our rankings are going down?
-
Hi Dana,
Thank you. I thought of that too but these pages aren't linked to anywhere in the site anymore so am I correct that screaming frog won't find them?
-
Hi Bob,
I use Screaming Frog for this. If you don't already have it, it's $99 very well spent. Once your site is crawled it's very easy to pull the 404s into an Excel spreadsheet and deal with them from there.
Hope that helps!
Dana
-
What's the best way to find the 404s in 9000 pages if they don't show up in GWT?
-
I highly agree to stewart’s statement that 404 might not affect rankings but lot of 404 will create a high bounce rate and this defiantly will increase the bounce rate which can cause the ranking drop.
When I work with clients, one of the first jobs I do is to reduce the 404’s number to minimum. It is not necessary to take it to zero but reduce it as much as you can!
-
I agree with Stewart, but it's also a tricky thing. Are you 100% positive there are no rogue links out in the www linking to any of these sites? Have you reviewed your site map are they hanging out in there? Could there be a 301 somewhere pointing to it? Not so much bounce rate I would be concerned about but usability - which is something that Google is taking a look at.
-
Per se they don't but a high bounce rate will harm your site - no one knows the extent of this but an adverse bounce rate makes up a part of the quality ranking signals (more than 200) Google uses to evaluate a site in the serps.
Therefore having several 404's can effect a bounce rate figure negatively and ultimately harm a site to a lesser or greater degree.
However, 50 I don't think is high relative to the numbers of visitors that navigate to a second page which is a postive metric - if that is the case for you I wouldn't worry. But 50 404's on a website with 200 pages is bad.
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 would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
why would my domain authority drop 2 points ?and how can i bring my domain authority back up?'.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | aronwp0 -
Goddady's Domain Masking and 301's
I have a client who's 7 domains and single website (instantpages®) exists within the clutches of GoDaddy. They own 6 kewyord rich domain names that 301 redirect with masking to the main branded domain. In effect, what this provides is the ability to add a title tag and meta description for a keyword rich domain name that displays content through an iframe. So really it's not duplicate content but this practice sets off my spidey sense that this is not a best practice regarding SEO. I want to suggest for the client to drop the idea of masking and do a straight 301 redirect to main branded domain. I'm sure that is fine but these domains are Not similar variations but actually vary widely: massage-city.com, city-massage.com, city-acupuncture.com, acupuncture-city.com, city-chiropractic.com, chiropractic-city.com etc ---- Doesn't Google frown on redirecting 6 domains to a single domain if they vary widely? Words of wisdom appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | superZj0 -
Are directory listings still appropriate in 2013? Aren't they old-style SEO and Penguin-worthy?
We have been reviewing our off-page SEO strategy for clients and as part of that process, we are looking at a number of superb info-graphics on the subject. I see that some of current ones still list "Directories" as being part of their off-page strategy. Aren't these directories mainly there for link-building purposes and provide Users no real benefit? I don't think I've ever seen a directory that I would use, apart for SEO research. Surely Google's Penguin algorithm would see directories in the same way and give them less value, or even penalise websites that use them to try to boost page rank? If I were to list my websites on directories it wouldn't be to share my lovely content with people that use directories to find great sites, it would be to sneakily build page rank. Am I missing the point? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
Scott0 -
Site ranking position 1, after 1 day existing
Hi, I'm working in the Online gaming and since a few months there was a website called 'Htmlwijzer.nl', it ranked page 1 for 'online casino' in Google.nl which is of course a high competive keyword and remained there for about 2 months. This website didn't come up slowly in Google.nl from page 10 to 1, it just was there one day at page 1. This one only had HTML-related information content and did rank for 'online casino' with a layer ad on it's site which would only be showed to users in the Netherlands. Now that website received a penalty after 2 months, and since today a new site is in Google at position 1, called www.casinowijzer.nl. It has completely no backlinks (online a 301 from the former domain). It just popped up there.. Does anyone know how this website could have gotten here? It's obviously blackhat, but for a keyword like 'online casino' it's quite amazing. Thanks,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | iwebdevnl0 -
How Fast Can You Rank a New Domain?
How long would it take to get a 1 page ranking for a new site after Penguin? Thinking about starting fresh. New site would have fresh content and keyword in the domain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | veed230 -
Is it negative to put a backlink into the footer's website of our clients ?
Hello there ! Everything is in the subject of this post but here is the context : we are a web agency and we, among others, build websites for our clients (most of them are shops). Until now, we put a link in their footer, like "developped by MyWebShop". But we don't know if it is bad or not. With only one website we can have like hundred of backlinks at once, but is it good for SEO or not ? Will Google penalize us thinking that is blackhat practices ? Is it better to put our link in the "legal notices" or "disclaimer" part of the websites ? What is the best practice for a lasting SEO ? I hope you understand my question, Thnak you in advance !
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mywebshop0 -
Has anyone seen this kind of google cache spam before?
Has anyone seen this kind of 'hack'? When looking at a site recently I found the Google cache version (from 28 Oct) strewn with mentions of all sorts of dodgy looking pharma products but the site itself looked fine. The site itself is www.istc.org.uk Looking in the source of the pages you can see the home pages contains: Browsing as googlebot showed me an empty page (though msnbot etc. returned a 'normal' non-pharma page). As a mildly amusing aside - when I tried to tell the istc about this, the person answering the phone clearly didn't believe me and couldn't get me off the line fast enough! Needless to say they haven't fixed it a week after being told.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JaspalX0 -
Ranking questions
We have questions about our ranking and would like some advice.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Whiteflash0