How to identify 404 that get links from external sites (but not search engines)?
-
one of our site had a poor site architecture causing now about 10.000s of 404 being currently reported in google webmaster tools.
-
Any idea about easily detecting among these thousands of 404, which ones are coming from links from external websites (so filtering out 404 caused by links from our own domain and 404 from search engines)?
-
crawl bandwidth seems to be an issue on this domain. Anything that can be done to accelerate google removing these 404 pages from their index? Due to number of 404 manual submission in google wbt one by one is not an option.
Or do you believe that google automatically will stop crawling these 404 pages within a month or so and no action needs to be taken?
thanks
-
-
Hi Robert,
thanks a lot. So I will not take action to get 404s out of google index.
Regarding your first point, I am not sure I understand how screaming frog would help. I did not use screaming frog yet but link sleuth for status code checks. The status check of 404 in google webmaster tools will probably generally also give 404 status in screaming frog. My objective is to identify among these thousands of 404, the few which are caused by inaccurate or outdated links on external websites so that I can create a 301 for these.
Best,
Daniel
-
icourse
I would suggest downloading the free version of screaming frog for an easy way to get status codes on any or all links.
As to fixing and "crawl bandwidth" being a problem, I disagree. If you are not being crawled it is because of all the 404's. I do not know the timeline for inaction on this, but I do believe "manual submission is not an option" is a recipe for disaster. Because fully analyzing your issues is outside the scope of Q&A, I would suggest you start manually fixing the issues and if on a CMS, start looking at plugins, etc. as a root cause.
Hope that helps
Robert
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
-
What IP Address does Googlebot use to read your site when coming from an external backlink?
Hi All, I'm trying to find more information on what IP address Googlebot would use when arriving to crawl your site from an external backlink. I'm under the impression Googlebot uses international signals to determine the best IP address to use when crawling (US / non-US) and then carries on with that IP when it arrives to your website? E.g. - Googlebot finds www.example.co.uk. Due to the ccTLD, it decides to crawl the site with a UK IP address rather than a US one. As it crawls this UK site, it finds a subdirectory backlink to your website and continues to crawl your website with the aforementioned UK IP address. Is this a correct assumption, or does Googlebot look at altering the IP address as it enters a backlink / new domain? Also, are ccTLDs the main signals to determine the possibility of Google switching to an international IP address to crawl, rather than the standard US one? Am I right in saying that hreflang tags don't apply here at all, as their purpose is to be used in SERPS and helping Google to determine which page to serve to users based on their IP etc. If anyone has any insight this would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattBassos0 -
Do I eventually 301 a page on our site that "expires," to a page that's related, but never expires, just to utilize the inbound link juice?
Our company gets inbound links from news websites that write stories about upcoming sporting events. The links we get are pointing to our event / ticket inventory pages on our commerce site. Once the event has passed, that event page is basically a dead page that shows no ticket inventory, and has no content. Also, each “event” page on our site has a unique url, since it’s an event that will eventually expire, as the game gets played, or the event has passed. Example of a url that a news site would link to: mysite.com/tickets/soldier-field/t7493325/nfc-divisional-home-game-chicago bears-vs-tbd-tickets.aspx Would there be any negative ramifications if I set up a 301 from the dead event page to another page on our site, one that is still somewhat related to the product in question, a landing page with content related to the team that just played, or venue they play in all season. Example, I would 301 to: mysite.com/venue/soldier-field tickets.aspx (This would be a live page that never expires.) I don’t know if that’s manipulating things a bit too much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ticket_King1 -
Organic search data not representative of site Authority, need advice
Hi, I seeking some advice, I have an organic search issue, I would like to figure out if there is any reason why my site www.aatravel.co.za would not be doing well in the rankings? This domain is more powerful than a previous Domain we had, 51 versus 37 according to MOZ, but despite this it is not ranking nearly as well. There are a few things to consider. The domain was owned by us then got taken away about 3 years ago and then 301ed to a completely new site, then it was 404ed for about a year before we got it back, and now we have it back and have populated it with the same data as the less powerful Domain www.aaholidays.co.za. I believe that most of the AA Travel Authority comes from a stronger backlink profile. Why would this now 2 month after we reskinned and converted 301s back not be ranking as highly? Is there an issue with old site structure and google not passing through the 301 link juice from old pages that have links to the new ones(we have 301ed them)? Also I have 301ed the old aaholidays.co.za site to this one as the new home of AA Travel, that organic traffic was at about 8 000 visits a month, and the new site is at about 2 300. Has Google sandboxed the Domain for a certain period of time, or is there something else that may be the matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ProsperoDigital0 -
What's the best way to check Google search results for all pages NOT linking to a domain?
I need to do a bit of link reclamation for some brand terms. From the little bit of searching I've done, there appear to be several thousand pages that meet the criteria, but I can already tell it's going to be impossible or extremely inefficient to save them all manually. Ideally, I need an exported list of all the pages mentioning brand terms not linking to my domain, and then I'll import them into BuzzStream for a link campaign. Anybody have any ideas about how to do that? Thanks! Jon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonMorrow0 -
When crawls occur - when will my links show up in Open Site Explorer
Hello everyone, I've been building links for a while now and none of them show up in Explorer. My domain authority hasn't changed for about a month or so. When does Google do crawls and when does SEOMoz do crawls? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Harbor_Compliance0 -
Block search engines from URLs created by internal search engine?
Hey guys, I've got a question for you all that I've been pondering for a few days now. I'm currently doing an SEO Technical Audit for a large scale directory. One major issue that they are having is that their internal search system (Directory Search) will create a new URL everytime a search query is entered by the user. This creates huge amounts of duplication on the website. I'm wondering if it would be best to block search engines from crawling these URLs entirely with Robots.txt? What do you guys think? Bearing in mind there are probably thousands of these pages already in the Google index? Thanks Kim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Voonie0 -
Best way to find broken links on a large site?
I've tried using Xenu, but this is a bit time consuming because it only tells you if the link sin't found & doesn't tell you which pages link to the 404'd page. Webmaster tools seems a bit dated & unreliable. Several of the links it lists as broken aren't. Does anyone have any other suggestions for compiling a list of broken links on a large site>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline1 -
Steps you can take to ensure your content is indexed and registered to your site before a scraper gets to it?
Hi, A clients site has significant amounts of original content that has blatantly been copied and pasted in various other competitor and article sites. I'm working with the client to rejig lots of this content and to publish new content. What steps would you recommend to undertake when the new, updated site is launched to ensure Google clearly attributes the content to the clients site first? One thing I will be doing is submitting a new xml + html sitemap. Thankyou
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Qasim_IMG0