Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. 404's - Do they impact search ranking/how do we get rid of them?

    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.

    404's - Do they impact search ranking/how do we get rid of them?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    19
    6514
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • carlystemmer
      carlystemmer last edited by

      Hi,

      We recently ran the Moz website crawl report and saw a number of 404 pages from our site come back. These were returned as "high priority" issues to fix. My question is, how do 404's impact search ranking? From what Google support tells me, 404's are "normal" and not a big deal to fix, but if they are "high priority" shouldn't we be doing something to remove them?

      Also, if I do want to remove the pages, how would I go about doing so? Is it enough to go into Webmaster tools and list it as a link no to crawl anymore or do we need to do work from the website development side as well?

      Here are a couple of examples that came back..these are articles that were previously posted but we decided to close out:

      http://loyalty360.org/loyalty-management/september-2011/let-me-guessyour-loyalty-program-isnt-working

      http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mark-johnson-speaks-at-motivation-show

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • evolvingSEO
        evolvingSEO @carlystemmer last edited by

        Hi

        As far as I know there is no way to do this in webmaster tools. You can test your robots.txt file with the Robots.txt Tester - but you need to actually update the real file to block URLs from being crawled.

        At any rate, normally you would not block 404s from being crawled - Google with either stop crawling them on their own, or this way if they are indexed they can drop out of the index.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • carlystemmer
          carlystemmer @evolvingSEO last edited by

          By submit to webmaster tools, I meant submit the link so Google will not crawl it again.

          evolvingSEO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • evolvingSEO
            evolvingSEO @carlystemmer last edited by

            What do you mean by "submit links to Google Webmaster Tools"? As far as I know there isn't a way to submit 404 URLs in there.

            The way to solve 404s are;

            • make the URL a real page again (if it broke by accident)
            • remove links pointing at the bad page
            • 301 redirect the 404 page to one that works
            • you can opt to leave it alone if there was nothing important on that page and there is no good page to redirect it to

            404s might hurt rankings, but only in extreme cases where it was a popular page and now you're losing the back link value or referral traffic etc. I'd say in 90/100 cases 404s will not hurt your rankings.

            carlystemmer 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • carlystemmer
              carlystemmer @evolvingSEO last edited by

              Interesting - good to know! So even when we submit these links to Google Webmaster tools, that doesn't solve the problem, correct? Even if Google isn't crawling these links (eventually) will it still hurt SEO rankings overall?

              evolvingSEO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • carlystemmer
                carlystemmer @MonicaOConnor last edited by

                Got it. So I guess we need to decide what makes sense work-load wise and what is best for the site. If we do 301 redirects, is that seen as more beneficial than an "engaging" 404 page that allows people to go to another page?

                It seems like the 404 page would be one project where constantly adding in 301 redirects would be a lot of work.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • MonicaOConnor
                  MonicaOConnor @carlystemmer last edited by

                  Theoretically a 404 error is a deleted page. To get rid of the 404 error you have to redirect the broken link, or deleted page.

                  carlystemmer 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • carlystemmer
                    carlystemmer @MonicaOConnor last edited by

                    Is there no way to just completely remove or delete a page/404 or it will always exist on some level?

                    MonicaOConnor 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • evolvingSEO
                      evolvingSEO last edited by

                      Hey There

                      Google's webmaster documentation says;

                      "Generally, 404 errors don’t impact your site’s ranking in Google, and you can safely ignore them."

                      When Google says "generally" this tends to mean "in most cases" or "not directly" or "there may be secondary effects"... you get the idea. 🙂

                      But I think they are assuming you need to be smart enough to know if the 404 was intentional, and if not why it happened. For example - if you had a really popular piece of content with back links directly to that URL, and then the URL 404s - you supposed may lose the "link juice" pointing into that article. So in that regard 404s can hurt rankings secondarily.

                      But as other have said, you can redirect your 404s to a similar page (Google recommends not the homepage).

                      I am not sure why the Moz report puts them in "high priority" - perhaps they mean "high priority" from a general web best practice point of view, and not strictly SEO.

                      carlystemmer 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                      • adamxj2
                        adamxj2 @carlystemmer last edited by

                        With that many I would suggest redirecting them to a relevant page rather than just stopping the indexing of them by submitting the links to Google Webmaster Tools. From what I've experienced, keeping the link juice flowing through your site by redirecting them is better for your overall SEO efforts.

                        Of course it's faster to submit the links to GWT…but that doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Regardless of what you do or how you do it, eliminating your crawl errors is very important.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • MonicaOConnor
                          MonicaOConnor @carlystemmer last edited by

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tz7Eexwp_A

                          This is video by Matt Cutts that gives some great advice. My goal is always to redirect them, even if it is back to the main article category page or even the home page. I hate the thought of losing a potential customer to a 404 error. This has to be your decision though.

                          Errors are not good, no matter what kind of error they are. Best practice is to remove any error you can. When your bounce rate increases you lose ranking power. When you have broken links, you lose searchers. That is the simplest way to put it.

                          carlystemmer 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                          • MonicaOConnor
                            MonicaOConnor @carlystemmer last edited by

                            Fix them, redirect them back to a relevant page and then mark them as fixed in GWT.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • carlystemmer
                              carlystemmer @adamxj2 last edited by

                              When we ran the MOZ report it said we had more than a couple...probably around 50 or so. Our website has been around 5-6 years and I don't think we have ever done anything with any of them. With this many errors, what is your suggestion? Would it be faster to submit the link to Google Webmaster tools than waiting for them to be crawled again?

                              MonicaOConnor adamxj2 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • MonicaOConnor
                                MonicaOConnor @JVRudnick last edited by

                                404's can reduce your ability to rank highly for keywords when they effect your bounce rate and lower your impressions. Consider it giving your website a bad reputation. Again, it takes a lot of them to do this.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • carlystemmer
                                  carlystemmer @MonicaOConnor last edited by

                                  We are using Expression Engine. A lot of the links are within our own site - they are articles we once posted, but then we decided to close for one reason or another, and now they are throwing a 404 error. We don't necessarily have anything to redirect them to since they are mostly just random article pieces, which is why we were looking into deleting them completely.

                                  MonicaOConnor 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • adamxj2
                                    adamxj2 @JVRudnick last edited by

                                    There's tons of documentation stating that 404's negatively affect SEO. It's definitely debatable and there are obviously other factors involved. My main point is that it's important to deal with any and all crawl errors.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • JVRudnick
                                      JVRudnick last edited by

                                      adamxj2 re: "... having too many at once can negatively affect your rankings...."

                                      ???

                                      on what testing do you quote that? As my own SEO world includes no such assumptions or proof of same!

                                      WHAT a 404 will affect is conversions...no one who shows up on a site after taking a link into same and finding a 404 will ever get a feeling other than if a site can't fix it's 404's then why would I belive they can sell me something etc.

                                      404's do NOT affect rankings....they disappear on their own it's true...but I always fix same asap!

                                      adamxj2 MonicaOConnor 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • adamxj2
                                        adamxj2 last edited by

                                        Hello!

                                        Although 404's will eventually stop being crawled by Google, having too many at once can negatively affect your rankings. The  most important thing is that you do not want to be linking to these 404s anywhere from within your site. If so, you want to definitely remove those links.

                                        If I have one or two 404s in my crawl errors, I typically will just leave them be and wait for them to be dropped out of being indexed. Some other solutions I've utilized are:

                                        1. Make an engaging 404 page so that when users find the page they will be encouraged to stay on the website. Having a search box or some of the most popular links on the page is a good place to start

                                        2. 301 redirect the pages to relevant pages that do exist. This will help your link juice flow and will make for a good user experience since they are reaching a relevant page.

                                        Hope that helps!

                                        carlystemmer 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                                        • MonicaOConnor
                                          MonicaOConnor last edited by

                                          I would log in to GWT and look at your 404 errors under crawl errors. In there you will see where the links are still linked from. If they are pointing at external sites, I would redirect them. I don't know what platform you are using, but you should be able to do this in the admin section of your platform.

                                          If they aren't linked externally, you should probably still redirect them. I know the Google says that 404 errors are harmless, but if you have dead links on your site and someone clicks on it, it most likely results in a lost searcher.

                                          Hope that helps!

                                          carlystemmer 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                          • 1 / 1
                                          • First post
                                            Last post

                                          Got a burning SEO question?

                                          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                                          Start my free trial


                                          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.

                                          • See all categories

                                          Related Questions

                                          • mozentution

                                            How to get back links with higher rank ?

                                            Hi All , These days I am finding new ways of creating back links.  Could any one tell me how to get backlinks with higher DA ?

                                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mozentution
                                            2
                                          • Wana-Ryd

                                            Readd/Reindex a page that was 410'd

                                            A script of ours had an error that caused some pages we didn't wish 410'd to be 410'd, we caught it in about 12 hours but for some pages it was too late. My question is, will those pages be reindexed again and how will that affect their page ranking will they eventually be back where they were?  Would submitting a site map with them help, or what would be the best way to correct this error (submit the links to google indexer maybe?).

                                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wana-Ryd
                                            0
                                          • Kingalan1

                                            How to Get Rid of Dates Shown In Google Search Results

                                            When I enter "Site: URL" to check what a search how Google displays  search result, a date appears at the very front. This takes away several characters, really valuable real estate. How can I stop Google from displaying these dates? There are certain Wordpress plugins like "WP Date Remover" however the seem to only apply to blog posts. Dates are appearing on results on all my Wordpress pages. Is there an internal setting in Wordpress that will allow me to remove dates for these non blogpost pages?

                                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
                                            1
                                          • Jseddon92

                                            Removing .html from URLs - impact of rankings?

                                            Good evening Mozzers. Couple of questions which I hope you can help with. Here's the first. I am wondering, are we likely to see ranking changes if we remove the .html from the sites URLs. For example website.com/category/sub-category.html Change to: website.com/category/sub-category/ We will of course make sure we 301 redirect to the new, user friendly URLs, but I am wondering if anyone has had previous experience of implementing this change and how it has effected rankings. By having the .html in the URLs, does this stop link juice being flowed back to the root category? Second question: If one page can be loaded with and without a forward slash "/" at the end, is this a duplicate page, or would Google consider this as the same page? Would like to eliminate duplicate content issues if this is the case. For example: website.com/category/ and website.com/category Duplicate content/pages?

                                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jseddon92
                                            0
                                          • Ria_

                                            Partial Match or RegEx in Search Console's URL Parameters Tool?

                                            So I currently have approximately 1000 of these URLs indexed, when I only want roughly 100 of them. Let's say the URL is www.example.com/page.php?par1=ABC123=&par2=DEF456=&par3=GHI789= All the indexed URLs follow that same kinda format, but I only want to index the URLs that have a par1 of ABC (but that could be ABC123 or ABC456 or whatever). Using URL Parameters tool in Search Console, I can ask Googlebot to only crawl URLs with a specific value. But is there any way to get a partial match, using regex maybe? Am I wasting my time with Search Console, and should I just disallow any page.php without par1=ABC in robots.txt?

                                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ria_
                                            0
                                          • McTaggart

                                            Why is /home used in this company's home URL?

                                            Just working with a company that has chosen a home URL with /home latched on - very strange indeed - has anybody else comes across this kind of homepage URL "decision" in the past? I can't see why on earth anybody would do this! Perhaps simply a logic-defying decision?

                                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
                                            0
                                          • Bill_at_Common_Form

                                            Does DMCA protection actually improve search rankings (assuming no one's stolen my content)

                                            Hello Moz Community, I had a conversation with someone who claimed that implementing a DMCA protection badge, such as those offered at http://www.dmca.com/ for $10/mo, will improve a site's Google rankings.  Is this true? I know that if my content is stolen it can hurt my rankings (or the stolen content can replace mine), but I'm asking if merely implementing the badge will help my rankings. Thanks! Bill

                                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bill_at_Common_Form
                                            0
                                          • wojkwasi

                                            Will using a service such as Akamai impact on rankings?

                                            Howdy 🙂 My client has a .com site they are looking at hosting via Akamai - they have offices in various locations, e.g UK, US, AU, RU & in some Asian countries. If they used Akamai, would the best approach be to set up seperate sites per country: .co.uk .com .com.au .ru .sg etc Although my understanding is that Googlebot is located in the US so if it crawled any of those sites it would always get a US IP address? So is the answer perhaps to go with Akamai for the .com only which should target the US market and use different / seperate C class hosts for the others? Thanks! Woj

                                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wojkwasi
                                            0

                                          Get started with Moz Pro!

                                          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                          Start my free trial
                                          Products
                                          • Moz Pro
                                          • Moz Local
                                          • Moz API
                                          • Moz Data
                                          • STAT
                                          • Product Updates
                                          Moz Solutions
                                          • SMB Solutions
                                          • Agency Solutions
                                          • Enterprise Solutions
                                          Free SEO Tools
                                          • Domain Authority Checker
                                          • Link Explorer
                                          • Keyword Explorer
                                          • Competitive Research
                                          • Brand Authority Checker
                                          • Local Citation Checker
                                          • MozBar Extension
                                          • MozCast
                                          Resources
                                          • Blog
                                          • SEO Learning Center
                                          • Help Hub
                                          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                          • How-to Guides
                                          • Moz Academy
                                          • API Docs
                                          About Moz
                                          • About
                                          • Team
                                          • Careers
                                          • Contact
                                          Why Moz
                                          • Case Studies
                                          • Testimonials
                                          Get Involved
                                          • Become an Affiliate
                                          • MozCon
                                          • Webinars
                                          • Practical Marketer Series
                                          • MozPod
                                          Connect with us

                                          Contact the Help team

                                          Join our newsletter
                                          Moz logo
                                          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                          • Accessibility
                                          • Terms of Use
                                          • Privacy

                                          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.