Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Googlebot HTTP 204 Status Code Handling?
-
If a user runs a search that returns no results, and the server returns a 204 (No Content), will Googlebot treat that as the rough equivalent of a 404 or a noindex? If not, then it seems one would want to noindex the page to avoid low quality penalties, but that might require more back and forth with the server, which isn't ideal.
Kurus
-
Thanks for your input.
-
I believe Google handles 204 codes the same as 200. They index a page with basically no content. Unless someone links to a 204 page however, Google will never see one by your example. Google is not out and about running searches on websites to see what comes up to find more content to index. If someone were to search on your site and get a 204, then link to it, then yeah, Google could crawl and index it. In that case though you might see it in your webmaster tools under crawl errors. Then you could noindex it or block it with robots.txt or something else.
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
-
Can Schema handle two sets of business hours?
I have a client who, due to covid, will have two sets of business hours. Morning hours for business customers, and afternoon hours for general customers. Is it possible to designate this distinction in schema?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bherman0 -
Google Indexing Of Pages As HTTPS vs HTTP
We recently updated our site to be mobile optimized. As part of the update, we had also planned on adding SSL security to the site. However, we use an iframe on a lot of our site pages from a third party vendor for real estate listings and that iframe was not SSL friendly and the vendor does not have that solution yet. So, those iframes weren't displaying the content. As a result, we had to shift gears and go back to just being http and not the new https that we were hoping for. However, google seems to have indexed a lot of our pages as https and gives a security error to any visitors. The new site was launched about a week ago and there was code in the htaccess file that was pushing to www and https. I have fixed the htaccess file to no longer have https. My questions is will google "reindex" the site once it recognizes the new htaccess commands in the next couple weeks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vikasnwu1 -
Where does Movie Theater schema markup code live?
What I am trying to accomplishI want what AMC has. When searching google for a movie at AMC near me, Google loads the movie times right onto the top of the first page. When you click the movie time it links to a pop up window that gives you the option to purchase from MovieTickets.com, Fandango or AMC.com.Info about my theaterMy theater hosts theater info and movie time info on their website. Once you click the time you want it takes you to a third party ticket fulfillment site via sub domain that I have little control over. Currently Fandango tickets show up in Google like AMCs but the option to buy on my theater site does not.Questions Generally, how do I accomplish this? Does the schema code get implemented on the third party ticket purchasing site or on my site? How can I ensure that the Google pop-up occurs so that users have a choice to purchase via Fandango or on my theaters website? TSt9g
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColeBField2 -
Should I include URLs that are 301'd or only include 200 status URLs in my sitemap.xml?
I'm not sure if I should be including old URLs (content) that are being redirected (301) to new URLs (content) in my sitemap.xml. Does anyone know if it is best to include or leave out 301ed URLs in a xml sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan.Smith0 -
Intro to programming/coding for seo
Hello, I am currently a SEO and am looking for an Intro to programming/coding course to help me implement various technical SEO tasks for my clients and the business-as the programming dept will not help me, as they do not see the value of SEO. Could someone pls recommend an online course that would introduce me to basic concepts and also specifically, the information that would help me to enhance our SEO? I would also like to better understand APIs. Thanks so much in advance for your help! Lauren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lfrazer1 -
How to handle a blog subdomain on the main sitemap and robots file?
Hi, I have some confusion about how our blog subdomain is handled in our sitemap. We have our main website, example.com, and our blog, blog.example.com. Should we list the blog subdomain URL in our main sitemap? In other words, is listing a subdomain allowed in the root sitemap? What does the final structure look like in terms of the sitemap and robots file? Specifically: **example.com/sitemap.xml ** would I include a link to our blog subdomain (blog.example.com)? example.com/robots.xml would I include a link to BOTH our main sitemap and blog sitemap? blog.example.com/sitemap.xml would I include a link to our main website URL (even though it's not a subdomain)? blog.example.com/robots.xml does a subdomain need its own robots file? I'm a technical SEO and understand the mechanics of much of on-page SEO.... but for some reason I never found an answer to this specific question and I am wondering how the pros do it. I appreciate your help with this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seo.owl0 -
Images Returning 404 Error Codes. 301 Redirects?
We're working with a site that has gone through a lot of changes over the years - ownership, complete site redesigns, different platforms, etc. - and we are finding that there are both a lot of pages and individual images that are returning 404 error codes in the Moz crawls. We're doing 301 redirects for the pages, but what would the best course of action be for the images? The images obviously don't exist on the site anymore and are therefore returning the 404 error codes. Should we do a 301 redirect to another similar image that is on the site now or redirect the images to an actual page? Or is there another solution that I'm not considering (besides doing nothing)? We'll go through the site to make sure that there aren't any pages within the site that are still linking to those images, which is probably where the 404 errors are coming from. Based on feedback below it sounds like once we do that, leaving them alone is a good option.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
One company, two address. How do I handle footer NAP?
I have a client with two address that fall under the same brand. One address is in CA and the other is in NY. I have a single domain and will be creating separate landing pages for each location but wanted to know how I should handle the NAP in the footer of the other pages. Should I list both NAPs, one NAP or neither NAPs in the footer? Thanks in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DigitalWorkboots0