Does Google penalize for having a bunch of Error 404s?
-
If a site removes thousands of pages in one day, without any redirects, is there reason to think Google will penalize the site for this?
I have thousands of subcategory index pages. I've figured out a way to reduce the number, but it won't be easy to put in redirects for the ones I'm deleting. They will just disappear.
There's no link juice issue. These pages are only linked internally, and indexed in Google. Nobody else links to them.
Does anyone think it would be better to remove the pages gradually over time instead of all at once?
Thanks!
-
I'd remove them gradually and then remove them out of the SERP via Webmaster Tools. Ensure you remove all links to those deleted page or else you'll keep getting 404's cropping up
-
Hi Chris,
I would suggest that you don't remove all them overnight, you would probably be better to remove them over time.
Removing pages is something normal, I remember reading Rand saying that a high percentage of the OSE index pages were returning a 404 when trying to reach them again.
Of course, for best practice, I would also recommend you 301 redirect those pages to their new version, even if it might not be easy, it will be usefull, not only for search engines, but also for user that might have bookmarked the page.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer.
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
-
404s clinging on in Search Console
What is a reasonable length of time to expect 404s to be resolved in Search Console? There was a mass of 404s that were built up from directory changes and filtering URLs that have been fixed. These have all been fixed but of course there are some that slipped the net. How long is it reasonable to expect the old 404s that don't have any links to drop away from Search Console? New 404s are still being reported over 4 months later. 'First detected' is always showing as a date later than the fixed 404's date. Is this reasonable, i've never seen this being so resilient and not clean up like this? We manually fix these 404s and like popcorn more turn up. Just to add the bulk of 404s came into existence around a year ago and left for around 8 months.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
Missing Google verification
I just went to check my client sites in Google search console and noticed a whole bunch of them no longer 'verified'. They were all previously verified. Why would they suddenly change status to 'not verified'? Does this affect anything (eg. search analytics data flowing through to GA)? Does this mean I have to verify all over again?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
How bad are 403 errors compared to 404s in regards to technical SEO?
Google Webmaster Tools reports "Access Denied" 403 errors. They also provide an explanation of what they mean at https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2409441?ctx=MCE&ctx=AD&hl=en. What are the implications of these Access Denied errors? Should they be 301 redirected internally?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Rotating content = Google Penalty?
Hi all. We have an ecommerce site which features various product sections. In each section you might have 60 products each displayed neatly in pages of 10. We recently added functionality, so that if a product is out of stock, it will automatically drop that product to the back of the list and bring another in stock one forward. We're just worried that Google will view the same information, repeatedly rotating on the first page of 10 products (the page that ranks) and think we're in some way trying to trick Google into thinking the content is fresh? Does anyone have a throw on this? Is it likely to penalise us? Thank you!!! Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bnknowles10 -
Website not coming up properly on Google
Hello, our website (http://www.roguevalleymicro.com/index.php) is not coming up properly on Google search (for example, when you search for Rogue Valley Microdevices on Google). We believe that there is something wrong with the website source code, and Google cannot index it properly. However, your Crawl Test results did not indicate any such problems. Can someone help us with some advice please?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | medved441 -
Google + pages and SEO results...
Hi, Can anyone give me insight into how people are getting away with naming their business by the SEO search term, creating a BS Google + page, then having that page rank high in the search results. I am speaking specifically about the results you get when you Google: "Los Angeles DUI Lawyer". As you can see from my attached screenshot (I'm doing the search in Los Angeles), the FIRST listing is a Google + business. Strangely, the phone number listed doesn't actually take you to a DUI attorney, but rather to some marketing group that never answers the phone. Can anyone give me insight into why Google even allows this? I just find it odd that Google cares so much about the user experience, but have the first result be something completely misleading. I know it sounds like I'm just jealous (which I am, a little), but I find it disheartening that we work so hard on SEO, and someone takes the top spot with an obvious BS page. UupqBU9
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
My traffic dropped over 60% - was I penalized?
Hi all, We launched a major update of our site in the middle of June. We have lots of pages and were indexed very quickly, and started ranking well for long tail terms. Last week, our organic traffic suddenly dropped over 60% as our pages started ranking much lower. One issue we discovered was that our site was responding to all subdomains, not just www, and Google did seem to be crawling two alternate subdomains -- Webmaster Tools shows crawl activity, but no pages indexed on these. We fixed that problem a couple days ago (all subdomains 301 to the www). Is that something that would have caused a sudden drop like we saw? This would have been an issue since the relaunch, though one of the subdomains only started getting crawled (~1,000 pages/day) in August. We have investigated a few other things that may have been a factor: We sent out a press release via iReach a few weeks ago which makes up the majority of our recent backlinks. Our site occasionally returns a 502 no gateway error when under heavy load, Google sees this 3-10 times at day. GA shows a page load spike the day before the drop, but we had worse spikes in the past that did not seem to have an impact. Did we just get lucky with a "honeymoon" phase with Google? This is the site: http://goo.gl/3DCbl Indexing continues -- we now have over 500k pages indexed and Google is crawling faster than ever, about 30,000 pages per day. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tact0 -
Am I buying links according to Google?
I have the opportunity to sponsor a variety of sections in a variety of .edu sites. Really appealing since they will both provide high quality traffic as well as to help our rankings... (maybe 🙂 )... Anyway this opportunity involves a monetary exchange, no different than advertising in Adwords and/or buying a display ad with the NYT. The links will be both text and banner... With follow links. My questions to you guys are: Is this practice penalize? And will display ads pass link juice also? Thanks for the help...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dhidalgo10