Managing 404 errors
-
What is the best way to manage 404 errors for pages that are no longer on the server.
For example, client deletes old site from server and replaces it with new site. Webmaster tools is reporting 100 + 404 errors form the old site. I've blocked the 404 pages with robot.text. Requested removal in google webmaster tools. And created a custom 404 page - http://www.tvsphoto.com/missingurlexample
Is there anything else I can do?
-
Thanks!
I've got one in place
Example:
I fairly sure its set up correctly
-
If possible you can list pages that have similar URLs on your 404 page. Some CMSs can help you do this. WordPress certainly comes to mind.
-
Also, be sure to have a user friendly 404 page. 404 is unavoidable due to typos, silliness and random acts of God, so it's always wise to have a highly functional page as a catchall for anything that you can't 301 redirect.
Examples
http://www.apple.com/gljasdlj
http://pages.ebay.com/gljasdlj
http://www.cnn.com/gljasdlj -
Thank again Barry, Very Helpful!
-
301 redirect them to their new page location.
EDIT: To clarify, there are probably some links coming in to those pages or there are new page equivilents that could better serve customers.
If there's definitely no match then I'd still consider redirecting them to the home page (or even a custom landing page, rather than the custom 404 page) to preserve as much link juice as possible.
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
-
Href Lang Errors
Hi Im getting href lang errors in my site audit for having no self referntial tags. I can't see anything wrong? Can anyone enlighten me 🙂 From this page ** http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/0-4-tonne-wll-6mm-single-leg-wire-rope-sling-580a078n**
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
URL Errors Help - 350K Page Not Founds in 22 days
Got a good one for you all this time... For our site, Google Search Console is reporting 436,758 "Page Not Found" errors within the Crawl Error report. This is an increase of 350,000 errors in just 22 days (on Sept 21 we had 87,000 errors which was essentially consistently at that number for the previous 4 months or more). Then on August 22nd the errors jumped to 140,000, then climbed steadily from the 26th until the 31st reaching 326,000 errors, and then climbed again slowly from Sept 2nd until today's 436K. Unfortunately I can only see the top 1,000 erroneous URLs in the console, of which they seem to be custom Google tracking URLs my team uses to track our pages. A few questions: 1. Is there anyway to see the full list of 400K URLs Google is reporting they cannot find?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | usnseomoz
2. Should we be concerned at all about these?
3. Any other advice? thanks in advance! C0 -
Duplicate Page Content Errors on Moz Crawl Report
Hi All, I seem to be losing a 'firefighting' battle with regards to various errors being reported on the Moz crawl report relating to; Duplicate Page Content Missing Page Title Missing Meta Duplicate Page Title While I acknowledge that some of the errors are valid (and we are working through them), I find some of them difficult to understand... Here is an example of a 'duplicate page content' error being reported; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com (which is obviously our homepage) Is reported to have 'duplicate page content' compared with the following pages; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/gratuities http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/holland-america-2014-offers/?order_by=brochure_lead_difference http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/about-us/meet-the-team/craig All 3 of those pages are completely different hence my confusion... This is just a solitary example, there are many more! I would be most interested to hear what people's opinions are... Many thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Significant Google crawl errors
We've got a site that continuously like clockwork encounters server errors with when Google crawls it. Since the end of last year it will go a week fine, then it will have two straight weeks of 70%-100% error rate when Google tries to crawl it. During this time you can still put the URL in and go to the site, but spider simulators return a 404 error. Just this morning we had another error message, I did a fetch and resubmit, and magically now it's back. We changed servers on it in Jan to Go Daddy because the previous server (Tronics) kept getting hacked. IIt's built in html so I'm wondering if it's something in the code maybe? http://www.campteam.com/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregWalt1 -
Why are our sites top landing pages URL's that no longer exist and retrun 404 errors?
Digging through analytics today an noticed that our sites top landing pages are for pages that were part of the old www.towelsrus.co.uk website taken down almost 12 months ago. All these pages had the 301 re-directs which were removed a few months back but still have not dropped out of Googles crawl error logs. I can't understand why this is happening but almost certainly the bounce rate on these pages (100%) mean we are loosing potential conversions. How can I identify what keywords and links people are using to land on these pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Magento Hidden Products & Google Not Found Errors
We recently moved our website over to the Magento eCommerce platform. Magento has functionality to make certain items not visible individually so you can, for example, take 6 products and turn it into 1 product where a customer can choose their options. You then hide all the individual products, leaving only that one product visible on the site and reducing duplicate content issues. We did this. It works great and the individual products don't show up in our site map, which is what we'd like. However, Google Webmaster Tools has all of these individual product URLs in its Not Found Crawl Errors. ! For example: White t-shirt URL: /white-t-shirt Red t-shirt URL: /red-t-shirt Blue t-shirt URL: /blue-t-shirt All of those are not visible on the site and the URLs do not appear in our site map. But they are all showing up in Google Webmaster Tools. Configurable t-shirt URL: /t-shirt This product is the only one visible on the site, does appear on the site map, and shows up in Google Webmaster Tools as a valid URL. ! Do you know how it found the individual products if it isn't in the site map and they aren't visible on the website? And how important do you think it is that we fix all of these hundreds of Not Found errors to point to the single visible product on the site? I would think it is fairly important, but don't want to spend a week of man power on it if the returns would be minimal. Thanks so much for any input!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing.SCG0 -
301 vs. 404
If a listing on a website is no longer available to display is it better to resolve to a 301 redirect or use a 404? I know from an SEO point of view a 301 will pass on the link value, but is that as valuable as saying tto the user hey that page is no lonoger available try something else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AU-SEO0 -
The system shows duplicate content for the same page (main domain and index.html). Is this an error of SEOMOZ?
Should I be worried that this will affect SEO? Most sites redirect to the index.html page, right? [edited by staff to remove toolbar data]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moskowman0