410 or 301 after URL update?
-
Hi there,
A site i'm working on atm has a thousand "not found" errors on google console (of course, I'm sure there are thousands more it's not showing us!).
The issue is a lot of them seem to come from a URL change. Damage has been done, the URLs have been changed and I can't stop that... but as you can imagine, i'm keen to fix as many as humanly possible.
I don't want to go mad with 301s - but for external links in, this seems like the best solution?
On the other hand, Google is reading internal links that simply aren't there anymore. Is it better to hunt down the new page and 301-it anyway? OR should I 410 and grit my teeth while google crawls and recrawls it, warning me that this page really doesn't exist?
Essentially I guess I'm asking, how many 301s are too many and will affect our DA? And what's the best solution for dealing with mass 404 errors - many of which aren't attached or linked to from any other pages anymore?
Thanks for any insights
-
Yeah, of course I can explain more.
HTTP 410 status code tells google that you've eliminated that page and will never be live again.
So google will kill that URL in its database and never ever crawl it again. Thus said, GoogleBot follows assumptions that site is working poorly or that there is some big problem.
How can this happen? when you have a massive amount of 404, 301 redirects, 410, 5xx you might have your site downgraded, possible deindexed, reduced bot crawling frequency or any other penalty you might imagine.Some info about 410 status code:
HTTP/1.1 status code definitionsHope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
That's really helpful thank you.
Based on the videos you sent, I'll keep 301ing these pages to take the user to the right place!
When you say 410s are "too powerful", can you elaborate? Some old blog posts or non-existant pages (with no updated page to redirect users to) I've 410ed. Would you recommend something else?
-
Hi Fubra!
There are some things to say here:
- Google can handle up to 5 redirects, so if you are under that number, you are fine.
- Serving 404's to google is not wrong neither will impact negatively in your rankings. But only give google a 404 only if that's the correct answer to the user.
- GoogleBot re-crawls from time to time every URL that has discovered in your website lifetime. The only URLs that will not re-crawl are those that you served a 410. HANDLE WITH CARE, 410 are too powerful.
- Redirects and DA are differents things. Dont know the new Mozscape Algorithm, I do not think that redirects would impact negatively in your DA. Focus in trying not to get GoogleBot angry or close some doors.
That said, my advice is: Crawl, scrape or manually get all those old URLs and analyze them. Then decide, whether to: 301, 404 or 410. Also, I'd give a little time to create a really powerful, interesting and userfriendly 404 page, so if some user land there they can keep being in your site and there is no bonces.
To back what i'm saying about how many redirections, Matt Cutts said it in these videos:
Can too many redirects from a single URL have a negative effect on crawling? Is there a limit to how many 301 (Permanent) redirects I can do on a site?Hope it helps.
Best Luck.
GR
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
-
Google ranking 301 redirected vanity urls
We use vanity URLs for offline marketing. An example vanity URL would be www.clientsite.com/promotion, this URL 301 redirects to a page on the site with tracking parameter ex: www.clientsite.com/mainpage?utm_source=source&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=xyz. We are running into issues with Google ignoring the 301 redirect and ranking these vanity URLs instead of the actual page on the website. Any suggestions on how to resolve?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalhound0 -
Many New Urls at once
Hi, I have about 5,000 new URLs to publish. For SEO/Google - Should I publish them gradually, or all at once is fine? *By the way - all these URLs were already indexed in the past, but then redirected. Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading10 -
Location in URLs question
Hi there, my company is a national theater news publisher. Quick question about a particular use case. When an editor publishes a story they can assign several discrete locations, allowing it to appear on each of those locations within our website. This article (http://www.theatermania.com/denver-theater/news/full-casting-if-then-tour-idina-menzel_74354.html), for example, appears in the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Denver section. We force the author to choose a primary location from that list, which controls the location displayed in the URL. Is this a bad practice? I'm wondering if the fact that having 'Denver' in the URL is misleading and hurts SEO value, particularly since that article features several other cities.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Search Refinement URLs
My site is using search refinement and I am concerned about the URL adding additional characters when it's refined. My current URL is: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm and when someone chooses their specific year, make, and model then it changes to: http://www.autopartscheaper.com/Air-Conditioning-Heater-Parts-s/10280.htm?searching=Y&Cat=10280&RefineBy_7371=7708. Will this negatively affect SEO for this URL? Will the URL be counted twice? Any help would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandLabs0 -
Google News URL Structure
Hi there folks I am looking for some guidance on Google News URLs. We are restructuring the site. A main traffic driver will be the traffic we get from Google News. Most large publishers use: www.site.com/news/12345/this-is-the-title/ Others use www.example.com/news/celebrity/12345/this-is-the-title/ etc. www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ www.example.com/celebrity-news/12345/this-is-the-title/ (Celebrity is a channel on Google News so should we try and follow that format?) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title/12345/ www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/this-is-the-title-12345/ (unique ID no at the end and part of the title URL) www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ Others include the date. So as you can see there are so many combinations and there doesnt seem to be any unity across news sites for this format. Have you any advice on how to structure these URLs? Particularly if we want to been seen as an authority on the following topics: fashion, hair, beauty, and celebrity news - in particular "celebrity name" So should the celebrity news section be www.example.com/news/celebrity-news/celebrity-name/this-is-the-title-12345/ or what? This is for a completely new site build. Thanks Barry
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deepti_C0 -
URL stucture like Zappos?
Hi, My site structure looks like this. domainname.com/nl/holidayhouses/villa-costa
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | remcozwaan
domainname.com/nl/apartments/apartment-caifem ect. I just went to zappos to research the site and het notice me that zappos.com has no directories. If i implement this my structure looks like this. domainname.com/nl/holidayhouse-villa-costa
domainname.com/nl/apartments-apartment-caifem Is this a better approach? Ciao, Remco0 -
URL blocked
Hi there, I have recently noticed that we have a link from an authoritative website, however when I looked at the code, it looked like this: <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="http://www.mydomain.com/" title="blocked::http://www.mydomain.com/">keyword</a> You will notice that in the code there is 'blocked::' What is this? has it the same effect as a nofollow tag? Thanks for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Duplicate URL home page
I just got a duplicate URL error on by SEOMOZ report - and I wonder if I should worry about it Assume my site is named www.widgets.com I'm getting duplicate url from http://www.widgets.com & http://www.widgets.com/ Do the search engines really see this as different on the home page? The general drift on the web is that You site should look like Home page = http://www.widgets.com And subpages http://www.widgets.com/widget1/ Of course it seems as though the IIS7 slash tool will rewrite everything Including the home page to a slash.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThomasErb0