Sites with dynamic content - GWT redirects and deletions
-
We have a site that has extremely dynamic content.
Every day they publish around 15 news flashes, each of which is setup as a distinct page with around 500 words. File structure is bluewidget.com/news/long-news-article-name. No timestamp in URL.
After a year, that's a lot of news flashes. The database was getting inefficient (it's managed by a ColdFusion CMS) so we started automatically physically deleting news flashes from the database, which sped things up.
The problem is that Google Webmaster Tools is detecting the freshly deleted pages and reporting large numbers of 404 pages. There are so many 404s that it's hard to see the non-news 404s, and I understand it would be a negative quality indicator to Google having that many missing pages.
We were toying with setting up redirects, but the volume of redirects would be so large that it would slow the site down again to load a large htaccess file for each page.
Because there isn't a datestamp in the URL we couldn't create a mask in the htaccess file automatically redirecting all bluewidget.com/news/yymm* to bluewidget.com/news
These long tail pages do send traffic, but for speed we only want to keep the last month of news flashes at the most.
What would you do to avoid Google thinking its a poorly maintained site?
-
Get someone to look at the database queries in coldfusion. Unless you have tens of millions of flashes it should be able to handle it on even a reasonably modest server for your traffic levels. It doesn't sound like it should be taxing.
However it sounds like your problem is some badly structured queries. The good news though is that this is probably quicker and easier too fix than upgrading hosting, coding new removal behaviour or any other "work-around"
What would you do to avoid Google thinking its a poorly maintained site?
Sorry to sound glib, but the answer is "maintain it better".
-
Well, to be honest Chris, It is a poorly maintained site. I mean deleting the past news is not at all the solution... I guess the right solution is to work on hosting side and enhance the data base or else the problem will be continuous.
If you are going to use too many redirections this will cause another problem and at the same time will slow down your website speed.
Actually 404s are generating because the URL is available in Google index but there is no page on your website available against it and this causes a 404... The easy way is to reduce 404 is to send a removal request to Google from Google webmaster tool.
And for future... instead of removing pages you should try investing on database and better hosting.
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
-
301 redirecting a site that currently links to the target site
I have a personal blog that has a good amount of back links pointing at it from high quality relevant authoritative sites in my niche. I also run a company in the same niche. I link to a page on the company site from the personal blog article that has bunch of relevant links pointing at it (as it's highly relevant to the content on the personal blog). Overview: Relevant personal blog post has a bunch of relevant external links pointing at it (completely organic). Relevant personal blog post then links (externally) to relevant company site page and is helping that page rank. Question: If I do the work to 301 the personal blog to the company site, and then link internally from the blog page to the other relevant company page, will this kill that back link or will the internal link help as much as the current external link does currently? **For clarity: ** External sites => External blog => External link to company page VS External sites => External blog 301 => Blog page (now on company blog) => Internal link to target page I would love to hear from anyone that has performed this in the past 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keyword_NotProvided0 -
Why my site not ranking
Hello everyone, can anyone suggest me, where i am having problem in my site www.suntechengineers.com, i know content is less,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | poojathakar
but any other things that i am missing in my site? Is There any on page query please let me know, i need urgently getting up this,please help thanx in advance0 -
New Site Launch - Redirecting Hundreds of Old Invalid URLs?
We have a client whose WMT shows a ton of "Not found" crawl errors after a new site launched. The URLs are largely a bunch of files that they had previously uploaded on their old site which have external links pointing at them. What is their best course of action, if they don't have files on the new site that correspond with these old files? Redirect to the home page? Leave them 404ing? Customize 404 message? (Note: They're mostly generic, non-human friendly URLs that are difficult to identify like /gallery3.php/ppage/3, g/interior.php/pid/3/sid/24, /uploads/1213196781.pdf)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VTDesignWorks0 -
Multiple 301 redirects and old site content appearing in Google results
I have found that for some Google searches the old version of the site on a completely different domain is appearing on page one of the results, while the newer site is only on page 3. The old site is redirecting to the new site with a 301 redirect, however there is also an additional redirect on the new site to force SSL. Despite this when you view the Google cache of the result that appears in Google the content of the page is still the old site. Is this normal or is Google not following the chain of 301 redirects? Edit: I just found out that downloading the page by right clicking a link and clicking download rather than viewing it in a browser leads to the old site appearing and the 301 redirect not being followed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | freshleafmedia0 -
Why is my m-dot site outranking my main site in SERPs?
My client has a WP site and a Duda mobile site that we inherited. For some reason their m-dot site is ranking on P1 of Google for their top KWs instead of the main site which is much more robust. The main site might rank beyond page 5 when the generic home page for their m-dot site appears on P1. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Etna0 -
1 Ecommerce site for several product segments or 1 Ecommerce site for each product segment ?
I am currently struggling with the decision whether to create individual ecommerce sites for each of 3 consumer product segments or rather to integrate them all under one umbrella domain. Obviously integration under 1 domain makes link building easier, but I am not sure how far google will favor in rankings websites focussed on one topic=product segment. Product segments are medium competitive.Product segments are not directly related but there may be some overlap in customer demographics- Any thoughts ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse1 -
Will an inbound follow link on a site be devalued by an inbound affiliate link on the same site?
Hey guys, quick question I didn't find an answer to online. Scenario: 1. Site A links to Site B. It's a natural, regular, follow-link 2. Site A joins Site B's affiliate program, and adds an affiliate link Question: Does the first, regular follow link get devalued by the second affiliate link? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
After Receiving a "Googlebot can't access your site" would this stop your site from being crawled?
Hi Everyone,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMA-DataSet
A few weeks ago now I received a "Googlebot can't access your site..... connection failure rate is 7.8%" message from the webmaster tools, I have since fixed the majority of these issues but iv noticed that all page except the main home page now have a page rank of N/A while the home page has a page rank of 5 still. Has this connectivity issues reduced the page ranks to N/A? or is it something else I'm missing? Thanks in advance.0