404 Errors
-
Do 404 Errors really have a lot of impact on rankings and over all authority of the site with google? Say you have a site that all the pages have moved apart from the home page which is exactly the same before moving? So most of your pages are showing 404 errros.
-
Hi Adul,
Just to follow up on this in case you're wondering why the answer is being downvoted. Blocking the pages that 404 in robots.txt will only stop Google getting a 404 because they can't reach the page. Users will still get a 404 so this isn't ideal. Also, if you don't 301 redirect the old pages to the new one, you lose any equity that those pages built up over the years.
Hope that helps,
Craig
-
Go to google webmaster tools, > Crawl > Crawl Error .. Download all page
Open excel and paste notepad robots.txt
User-agent: *
disallow: /page1.html
Disallow: /page2.html -
If no one can access your site except for the home page, that is pretty bad.
As to rankings, look at it from a broad perspective. A user clicks a link in search results. That link goes to a 404. They immediately go back and find someone else's site or link to click on. Another user clicks another link for the same broken site. They get a 404 error and do the same thing. Google bot comes along and sees that the site in question has a very low on-page time, and users frequently leave and go somewhere else. They also see a large quanity of the pages dont work.
If you were Google, would you give that site much weight or credit? Or would you hand it to a site that works? I don't think they openly express that it can hurt you, or that they will hurt your ranking for having 404 errors. IMO they do, it's just not as transparent as the rest of the things they state to do to improve your ranking.
-
OP, your case is an extreme one in that every page on the site but the homepage 404s. That means you moved but didn't do any 301 redirects, so that's an issue.
But generally, 404s have no impact on your site's ranking and that's been stated on record multiple times.
-
Hi, the 404 errors are pretty bad and en user experience standpoint and so Google does not like them. During domain migrations, the most important aspect is to control the number of 404 errors to the possible extent if not possible to make them zero.
When pages are moved, you should go in for a one-to-one or page-to-page server-side, 301 permanent redirection from the old pages to the corresponding new locations so that the old pages do not end-up in 404 errors and with 301 in place, Google will know that the old pages are no more in force and that they have been replaced by the new corresponding destinations. This will also make the old ones replaced by the new ones in search engine indices.
So to conclude, 404 errors are bad from both, the users and the search engines.
Hope it helps my friend.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
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
-
404 broken URLs coming up in Google
When we do a search for our brand, we are get the following results in google.com.au (see image attachment). As outlined in red, there are listings in Google that result in 404 Page Not Found URLs. What can we do to enable google to do a recrawl or to ensure that these broken URLs are no longer listed in Google? Thanks for your help here! sBqpvtj
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gavo0 -
Should I Keep adding 301s or use a noindex,follow/canonical or a 404 in this situation?
Hi Mozzers, I feel I am facing a double edge sword situation. I am in the process of migrating 4 domains into one. I am in the process of creating URL redirect mapping The pages I am having the most issues are the event pages that are past due but carry some value as they generally have one external followed link. www.example.com/event-2008 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 www.example.com/event-2007 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 www.example.com/event-2006 301 redirect to www.newdomain.com/event-2016 Again these old events aren't necessarily important in terms of link equity but do carry some and at the same time keep adding multiple 301s pointing to the same page may not be a good ideas as it will increase the page speed load time which will affect the new site's performance. If i add a 404 I will lose the bit of equity in those. No index,follow may work since it won't index the old domain nor the page itself but still not 100% sure about it. I am not sure how a canonical would work since it would keep the old domain live. At this point I am not sure which direction I should follow? Thanks for your answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
How to Set Up Canonical Tags to Eliminate Duplicate Content Error
Google Webmaster Tools under HTML improvements is showing duplicate meta descriptions for 2 similar pages. The 2 pages are for building address. The URL has several pages because there are multiple property listings for this building. The URLs in question are: www.metro-manhattan.com/601-west-26th-street-starrett-lehigh-building-contains-executive-office-space-manhattan/page/3 www.metro-manhattan.com/601-west-26th-street-starrett-lehigh-building-contains-executive-office-space-manhattan How do I correct this error using canonical tags? Do I enter the URL of the 1<sup>st</sup> page under “Canonical URL” under “Advanced” to show Google that these pages are one and the same? If so, do I enter the entire URL into this field (www.metro-manhattan.com /601-west-26th-street-starrett-lehigh-building-contains-executive-office-space-manhattan) or an abbreviated version (/601-west-26th-street-starrett-lehigh-building-contains-executive-office-space-manhattan)? Please see attached images. Thanks!! Alan rUspIzk 34aSQ7k
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Add noindex,nofollow prior to removing pages resulting in 404's
We're working with another site that unfortunately due to how their website has been programmed creates a bit of a mess. Whenever an employee removes a page from their site through their homegrown 'content management system', rather than 301'ing to another location on their site, the page is deleted and results in a 404. The interim question until they implement a better solution in managing their website is: Should they first add noindex,nofollow to the pages that are scheduled to be removed. Then once they are removed, they become 404's? Of note, it is possible that some of these pages will be used again in the future, and I would imagine they could submit them to Google through Webmaster Tools and adding the pages to their sitemap.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
How concerning is a message from Google about an increase in server errors?
In the past few weeks I have started getting messages from Google webmasters about an increase in server errors. According to our r&d team these messages come at times our site has been down and Google is not an accurate measure of the site health. 1 - are they correct and is there a better tool to be using? 2 - could be harmed that Google is occasionally running into this problem..that is then fixed within a few hours? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
How To Remve Rel Canonical Error from site
Hello friends, I have a site there I install all in one SEO plugin when I add my site at seomoz.org after the crawling results it so there are a penalty of Rel Conanical tag error but when I see my editor code there I see that all in one seo automatically giving rel conanical tag. Now I don’t understand that why seomoz giving these errors. Please help me to resolve this problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KLLC0 -
Rich Snippets Publisher errors
Hi all. Happen to do a bit of testing with some of our microformat and microdata markup when I noticed our linked Google+ Publisher markup has stopped working. It definitely was working, and nothings changed, but now we are flagging errors, and I've noticed some of our competitors also have the same problem. publisher linked Google+ page = https://plus.google.com/103929635387487847550
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sjr4x4
Error: This page does not include verified publisher markup. Learn more. If I actually add a duplicate rel="publisher" then I get the following results: Extracted Author/Publisher for this page publisherlinked Google+ page = https://plus.google.com/103929635387487847550
Error: This page does not include verified publisher markup. Learn more. publisherlinked Google+ page = https://plus.google.com/103929635387487847550/ The second line doesn't seem to flag an error? I know this is still all pretty new, so is anyone else having problems or odd results, or is Google having some problems? All our other rich snippets such as reviews etc are working fine, just seems to be the publisher bit. cheers Steve0 -
Google Webmaster Tools Sitemap errors for phantom urls?
Two weeks ago we changed our urls so the correct addresses are all lowercase. Everything else 301 redirects to those. We have submitted and made sure that Google has downloaded our updated sitemap several times since. Even so, Webmaster Tools is reporting 33000 + errors in our sitemap for urls that are no longer in our sitemap and haven't been for weeks. It claims to have found the errors within the last couple of days but the sitemap has been updated for a couple of weeks and has been downloaded by Google at least three times since. Here is our sitemap: http://www.aquinasandmore.com/urllist.xml Here are a couple of urls that Webmaster Tools says are in the sitemap: http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-gifts/Caroline-Gerhardinger-Large-Sterling-Silver-Medal/sku/78664
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot
Redirect error unavailable
Oct 7, 2011
http://www.aquinasandmore.com/catholic-gifts/Catherine-of-Bologna-Small-Gold-Filled-Medal/sku/78706
Redirect error unavailable
Oct 7, 20110