Using disavow tool for 404s
-
Hey Community,
Got a question about the disavow tool for you. My site is getting thousands of 404 errors from old blog/coupon/you name it sites linking to our old URL structure (which used underscores and ended in .jsp).
It seems like the webmasters of these sites aren't answering back or haven't updated their sites in ages so it's returning 404 errors. If I disavow these domains and/or links will it clear out these 404 errors in Google? I read the GWT help page on it, but it didn't seem to answer this question.
Feel free to ask any questions that may help you understand the issue more.
Thanks for your help,
-Reed -
Hey Doug, had another question for you. A big majority (90% of 18,000+ errors) of our 404 errors are coming from .jsp files from our old website.
Of course, it's not ideal to manually update or redirect these, but possibly write a script to automatically change them. Would it be beneficial to add this .jsp to our robots.txt file?
-
Thanks Doug, really helpful answer.
I am getting thousands of 404's but when I dive into them the majority of the 404 URLs can't be found in any of the "linked from" examples GWT gives me.
I think 301 redirects are the best option like you said and/or having a good 404 page.
Thanks,
-Reed -
The disavow tool isn't going to "fix" these 404s.
404's aren't always a bad thing. The warnings in GWT are just there to make you aware that there's potentially a problem with your site. It doesn't mean there IS a problem.
Is there content on your site that visitors clicking on these links should be arriving at? In which case you want to implement 301 redirects so that your visitors arrive on the most appropriate pate.
If there's nothing relevant on the site any more - a 404 error is perfectly acceptable.
Of course, you want to make sure that your 404 page gives the visitors the best chance/incentive to dig into the content on your site. Adding a nice obvious search box and/or links to most popular content may be a good idea. If you're getting lots of visitors from a particular site that you can maybe tailor your 404 message depending on the referrer.
The drawback here is that links pointing at 404 error pages won't pass link-equity. If there is value in the links, and you're happy that they're going to be seen a natural/authentic as far as google is concerned then you can always 301 redirect these.
Where you really should pay attention is where you have internal links on your site that are reporting 404s. These are under your control and you really don't want to give you visitors a poor experience with lots of broken links on your site.
-
I wouldn't recommend using the disavow tool for this. The disavow tool is used to clean up spammy links that were not gained naturally.
A better solution is to use 301 redirects and redirect the 404'd pages to the new pages that work on your website. That way users will land where they should if they click the links, and Google will still give you juice from those links.
Here's a place to get started on how t do that: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en
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
-
Regex in Disavow Files?
Hi, Will Regex expressions work in a disavow file? If i include website.com/* will that work or would you recommend just website.com? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fubra0 -
Disavowing a .edu
I have a backlink that I found from http://onucdm.onu.edu/mt/hmlref/2010/10/see_below.html . . . it is a nofollow, so it doesn't seem to be doing much harm. But this is obviously spam. It is from a .edu, so I'm not sure what I should do. Think it's harming my site at all? In general, how do you determine what to disavow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KevinViner0 -
Tool to bulk check outbound links
Hi. I have a list of 50 domains I need to check for links to three different sites. Does anybody know an easy way to do this? The best solution I have found so far is to crawl each with Screaming Frog and search for the domains, but I can only do one at a time this way. Some way to speed it up would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Webmaster tools: which one do you use? Yandex Yay or Nay?
I usually verify websites on Google and Bing Webmaster. How important it is to verify on Yandex Webmaster if Russia is not one of the targeted locations?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | selectitaly0 -
Disavow first (and link removal outreach second) as tactic?
I need to remove/disavow hundreds of domains due to an algorithmic penalty. Has anyone disavowed first and done the outreach thing second as a tactic? The reason why I was considering this was as follows: Most of the websites are from spammy websites and unlikely to have monitored accounts/available contact details. My business is incredibly seasonal, only being easily profitable for half of the year. The season starts from next month so the window of opportunity to get it done is small. If there's a Penguin update before I get it done, then it could be very bad news. Any thoughts would be much appreciated. (Incidentally, if you are interested in, I also posted here about it: http://moz.com/community/q/honest-thoughts-needed-about-link-building-removal)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Coraltoes770 -
Re-using Content From a Previous Website - Risky?
Over the years, I've gathered thousands of user reviews on a website I am shutting down although I would like to keep them for another website. I removed the reviews from the old website, set the reviews pages to "noindex" and removed the pages from Google's index using the Webmaster Tools. At this point the reviews are not showing up in Google's search results anymore. Would there be any concerns about posting these reviews on a new website? Can it get penalized for duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Dilemma: Should we use pagination or 'Load More' Function
In the interest of pleasing Google with their recent updates and clamping down on duplicate content and giving a higher preference to pages with rich data, we had a tiny dilemma that might help others too. We have a directory like site, very similar to Tripadvisor or Yelp, would it be best to: A) have paginated content with almost 40 pages deep of data < OR > B) display 20 results per page and at the bottom have "Load More" function which would feed more data only once its clicked. The problem we are having now is that deep pages are getting indexed and its doing us no good, most of the juice and page value is on the 1st one, not the inner pages. Wondering what are the schools of thought on this one. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danialniazi0 -
Best tool to calculate link distribution?
What is the best tool to calculate the total link distribution throughout a site? I know opensiteexplorer.com's "top pages" breaks down the numbers for you? Are there any others?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0