404 vs. 200?
-
Is it better to have an error page return a 404 or 200? If I change it to 200, will I still be able to see reports of 404's and/ or broken links? Is there a valid SEO reason that Google would have for not wanting error pages to return 200?
In other words, is there any SEO reason to absolutely change it to return a 404? I would rather let it return 200 if no priority reason to change.
[title edited by staff to provide clarity]
-
If the page has external links pointing to it, I use a 301 so as to not lose the link juice.
-
Yes, but that isn't the reason I gave.
Matt Cutts said that Google does a pretty good job of recognizing error pages, even if they are 200's.
404 is the correct status to use for page not found, regardless of whether Google can guess whether a 200 page is an error page or not. Based on the fact that 404 is the correct status to use for page not found, I suggest using it rather than a 200 page.
-
Thanks Adam. Is there a valid SEO reason rather than just Matt Cutts says?
; )
-
404 is the correct status to return for page not found. Matt Cutts has indicated that Google does a pretty good job of guessing when a 200 page is an error page, but why not make it easy for Google? I always prefer to use 404 or 301 for pages that don't exist.
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
-
www vs non-www
We have 2 variations of domains. www and non-www
Technical SEO | | aaaannieee
Both can be seen by users and have been linked to on press releases, but only the www one has data on Google Search Console.
In the case, what is the best practice for us?0 -
Webmaster tools showing 200 page load ok - all other testing tools show a 301
hey, on https://www.xxx.co we've setup a 301 redirect to xxx.us - > BUT in webmaster tools its still showing a 200 load ok, whereas on all other testing tools its showing a 301 redirect (screamingfrog etc) even https://dns.google.com/query?name=www.xxx.co is showing that its 301 redirected. Any ideas? as we want to trigger the change of address tool in WMT and its saying it cant as it loads the homepage still....
Technical SEO | | RobertN-London0 -
Full Ecommerce vs seperate shop section
Just wondering is anyone had any thoughts on whats the easiest for SEO purposes. My main focus is to get people to buy our installation services. We could either a) Have a full ecommerce website and on every product we can advertise the fact that we install the products. As well as creatign additinal CMS pages OR b) Create a content driven site promoting our installation services and then having a separate tab at the top which can be very prominent called Shop or Buy online. The customer can then visit that page for DIY products. Would either option be a better option for SEO purposes/usability for the customer?
Technical SEO | | paulfoz16091 -
Sitemap issue? 404's & 500's are regenerating?
I am using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to generate a sitemap on http://www.atozqualityfencing.com. Last month, I had an associate create redirects for over 200 404 errors. She did this via the .htaccess file. Today, there are the same amount of 404s along with a number of 503 errors. This new Wordpress website was constructed on a subdirectory and made live by simply entering some code into the .htaccess file in order to direct browsers to the content we wanted live. In other words, the content actually resides in a subdirectory titled "newsite" but is shown live on the main url. Can you tell me why we are having these 404 & 503 errors? I have no idea where to begin looking.
Technical SEO | | JanetJ0 -
Will deleting Wordpress tags result in 404 errors or anything?
I want to clean up my tags and I'm worried I'm going to look in my webmasters the next day with hundreds of errors. Whats the best way of doing this?
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
SEO Terms for Internal Vs External
Hey there! I am writing up an SEO plan for our company and wanted to get the groups input on the use of some SEO terms. I need to organize and explain these efforts to nonSEO people. I usually talk about, SEO in terms of "Internal" vs "External" efforts. Internal SEO efforts being things like Title Tags, Description Tags, Page Speed, Minimizing errors, proper 301 redirect, content development for the site, internal linking and anchor, etc. External SEO efforts being things like Link building, social media profile setups and posts (FB Twitter Pinterest, YouTube), PR work. How do you split these out? What terms do you use? Do you subdivide these tasks? What terms do you use? For example, with Internal, I sometimes talk about "Technical SEO" that has do to with making sure that site speed is working well, 301s are setup correctly, noindex tag etc are all used properly. These are things that different versus "On Page" efforts to use keywords properly etc. I will also use the term "Site Visibility" for non SEOs to explain the technical impact. For example, if your site has the wrong robots.txt, if you have 500 errors everywhere and a slow site, if you are sending spiders down a daisy chain of 301s, it is difficult for the key parts of your site to be found and so your "Visibility" to the engines are poor. You have to get your visibility up, before you begin to then worry about if you have the right keywords on a page etc. Any input or references would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CleverPhD0 -
Rel=Canonical, WWW vs non WWW and SEO
Okay so I'm a bit of a loss here. For what ever reason just about every single Wordpress site I has will turn www.mysite.com into mysite.com in the browser bar. I assume this is the rel=canonical tag at work, there are no 301s on my site. When I use the Open Site Explorer and type in www.mysite.com it shows a domain authority of around 40 and a few hundred backlinks... and then I get the message. Oh Hey! It looks like that URL redirects to XXXXXX. Would you like to see data for <a class="clickable redirects">that URL instead</a>? So if I click to see this data instead I have less than half of that domain authority and about 2 backlinks. *** Does this make a difference SEO wise? Should my non WWW be redirecting to my WWW instead because that's where the domain authority and backlinks are? Why am I getting two different domain authority and backlink counts if they are essentially the same? Or am I wrong and all that link juice and authority passes just the same?
Technical SEO | | twilightofidols0 -
Ror.xml vs sitemap.xml
Hey Mozzers, So I've been reading somethings lately and some are saying that the top search engines do not use ror.xml sitemap but focus just on the sitemap.xml. Is that true? Do you use ror? if so, for what purpose, products, "special articles", other uses? Can sitemap be sufficient for all of those? Thank you, Vadim
Technical SEO | | vijayvasu0