Godaddy and Soft 404's
-
Hello,
We've found that a website we manage has a list of not-found URLS in Google webmaster tools which are "soft 404's " according to Google. I went to the hosting company GoDaddy to explain and to see what they could do. As far as I can see GoDaddy's server are responding with a 200 HTTP error code - meaning that the page exists and was served properly. They have sort of disowned this as their problem. Their server is not serving up a true 404 response. This is a WordPress site. 1) Has anyone seen this problem before with GoDaddy?Is it a GoDaddy problem?2) Do you know a way to sort this issue? When I use the command site:mydomain.co.uk the number of URLs indexed is about right except for 2 or 3 "soft URLs" . So I wonder why webmaster tools report so many yet I can't see them all in the index?
-
We haven't tried the plug-in yet. The pages not found route to a custom 404 page so we can see a 302 redirect to that and then the 200 because the custom page was displayed. Per other forums we tried forcing the 404 return code prior to the page being loaded but this seems to be getting ignored or overwritten by GoDaddy.
I understand some people view the 200 as being correct as a page was loaded correctly but Google does ask for a 404 for a page not found.
-
Hi again, Al123al! Are you able to provide any info about your CMS? Or did the Redirection plugin recommendation take care of it? If so, please mark Dan's response as a Good Answer.
-
What CMS platform are you using? If you're on WordPress, for example, you can use the Redirection plugin to redirect any non-existing url to an existing relevant page.
Alternatively you can do the same with your .htaccess file.
-
The URLS don't exist but I can't see a way of having them return a 404.
-
Hi AL123al! Did Dan's response help? We'd love an update.
-
-
I have a few sites on Godaddy and haven't seen anything unusual occurring for soft 404s.
-
It depends on the cause - are they a large percentage of the total indexed pages? By the sound of it they're only 2 or 3 from a total of how many?
The solution is usually to check why your pages aren't returning a proper 404 error code if they don't exist, or whether there is an issue with them being redirected somewhere.
-
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
-
Are the duplicate content and 302 redirects errors negatively affecting ranking in my client's OS Commerce site?
I am working on an OS Commerce site and struggling to get it to rank even for the domain name. Moz is showing a huge number of 302 redirects and duplicate content issues but the web developer claims they can not fix those because ‘that is how the software in which your website is created works’. Have you any experience of OS Commerce? Is it the 302 redirects and duplicate content errors negatively affecting the ranking?
Technical SEO | | Web-Incite0 -
Why am I not showing up in the SERP's or Google Local?
I have been trying to optimise the following site for both Google SERP's and Google Local - Pixel Primate The URL has been around for around 3 years now but they just updated the website and launched it in December 2012. I did the on-page optimisation early in January 2013 and Google seems to have indexed the changes, for the home page at least. One major keyword I am targeting for the home page is 'Web Design Leicester'. I understand that the DA is fairly low (24) so this is something I need to improve. However, I've experienced positive results fairly quickly from just on-page optimisation for other sites I have worked on. The site just doesn't seem to be ranking at all for any keywords. Maybe the industry type is just extremely competitve but I find it very strange to not be visible anywhere in the SERPs. The site does not seem to have any penalties as it ranks for 'Pixel Primate' and all pages appear when doing a site: search. Also what's strange is that I set up the Google Local listing years ago but it doesn't appear anywhere in the local listing, not even when I search for it manually. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0 -
How do you fix soft 404 errors?
I'm getting soft 404 errors for a gallery on my site: http://chrle.us/MBKs yet when I visit the url: http://www.chrisboar.com/html/galleries/114/portfolio/weddings-1/0 the image/url is there. Not sure how to fix this. note we do redirect the site to the flash site and only use those URLs for SEO purposes. Maybe that is what is causing it. thanks
Technical SEO | | callmeed0 -
How to properly remove 404 errors
Hi, According to seomoz report I have two 404 errors on my site. (http://screencast.com/t/2FG8fA1dvGB) I removed them from google webmasters central about 2 weeks ago (http://screencast.com/t/MQ8XBvrFm ) , but they're still showing as an error in the next report (weekly update). Is there anything else you do about 404 or just remove urls through gwc? Or maybe seomoz data is delayed? Thanks in advance, JJ
Technical SEO | | jjtech0 -
Will a "blog=example "parameter at the end of my URLs affect google's crawling them?
For example, I'm wondering if www.example.com/blog/blog-post is better than www.example.com/blog/blog-post?blog=example? I'm currently using the www.example.com/blog/blog-post?blog=example structure as our canonical page for content. I'm also wondering, if the parameter doesn't affect crawling, if it would hurt rankings in any way. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Intridea0 -
404 errors on a 301'd page
I current have a site that when run though a site map tool (screaming frog or xenu) returns a 404 error on a number of pages The pages are indexed in Google and when visited they do 301 to the correct page? why would the sitemap tool be giving me a different result? is it not reading the page correctly?
Technical SEO | | EAOM0 -
Why do I have one page showing as two url's?
My SEOMoz stats show that I have duplicate titles for the following two url's: http://www.rmtracking.com/products.php and http://www.rmtracking.com/products I have checked my server files, and I don't see a live page without the php. A while back, we converted our site from html to php, but the html pages have 301's and as you can see the page without the php is properly redirecting to the php page. Any ideas why this would show as two separate url's?
Technical SEO | | BradBorst0 -
How to proceed on this 404 situation
Hi folks, I have a website (www.mysite.com) where I can't host a 404 page inside the subdomain www because a CMS issue. In order to provide a 404 page, I can create a subdomain like “404.mysite.com” that returns 404 and then if I find that a page does not exist I can redirect it to 404.mysite.com. My question is: should I redirect as 301 or 302? Does it have any difference?
Technical SEO | | fabioricotta-840380