Do 404 pages affect Google rankings?

socialagency · Mar 14, 2016

When I checked in Google webmaster tool for one of my sites, I found 500 errors (404), they are pages I deleted or moved to a new category

So, what should I do? and do they affect Google rankings if I don't fix them?

ericplotz1 · Mar 14, 2016

socialagency said:
When I checked in Google webmaster tool for one of my sites, I found 500 errors (404), they are pages I deleted or moved to a new category

So, what should I do? and do they affect Google rankings if I don't fix them?

Yes it can be bad for your site and 500 of em' surely isn't good. If you have wordpress you can use a redirect plugin. Theres a few and it's been a while since I've used one, but I beleive it was the "Redirect All 404 To Homepage" or something like that.

Thats an easy way.

If its the plugin I used a few times in the pas, it allowed me to redirect whatever page I wanted and redirect it wherever I wanted it to. This is really what you want to do with pages that have any SEO value, because you can redirect to relevant pages and not send everything to the homepage. Which is the right way.

Or you can redirect in the htaccess file with:

Code:

redirect 301 /old/oldURL.com http://www.newURL.com

samimnoorzaitgc · Mar 14, 2016

What? Over 500 errors? If you wanna hear from me, please avoid of these. These 404 errors can reduce your site's traffic. It takes a lot of time for google to destroy the old pages and crawl the newer ones. Try to manage/edit your pages. Reduce this errors as much as you can.

designstoredxb · Mar 17, 2016

The answer can be yes and No. Yes in the sense that Google will like your site if user will like it so it means if your site has too many not found errors then it can lead to a poor user experience so Google will consider it not a trust worthy useful site and it can ultimately lead to higher bounce rate. No in the sense that it is not a ranking factor like other SEO ranking factors.

jamilaliahmed · Sep 2, 2016

The HTTP 404 Not Found Error means that the webpage you were trying to reach could not be found on the server. It is a Client-side Error which means that either the page has been removed or moved and the URL was not changed accordingly, or that you typed in the URL incorrectly.

You should redirect all 404 error pages to the homepage or other relevant page.

hipporeview · Sep 22, 2016

If you are using Wordpress, just install a plugin which can redirect to your live page. If you have much 404 pages, it is not good for your ranking.

CyberHour · Sep 22, 2016

"You should redirect all 404 error pages to the homepage or other relevant page."

Doing that will lead to the so called dublicate content .

404 page it self wont hurt your SEO what , the issue is that if you don't have userfriendly 404 page (with relevant links to other articles etc etc) you will have high bunch rate which will lead to lower ranking .

OffshoreDedicated · Sep 24, 2016

Error pages have bad affect on SEO.
You should redirect any error pages to your web sites homepage. You can use some good plugin for this purpose as well.

SpecialRDP · Oct 6, 2016

Hello As Far As i know Many Peoples not have proper knowledge about htaccess how to edit or etc so it;s better take plugin for all this sortout vert fast

Optimidia · Oct 11, 2016

I wouldn't suggest that SpecialRDP. Plugins tend to edit things that shouldn't be edited or don't have the proper fail-proof coding to make sure they don't add/remove lines they shouldn't at time. The best advice is if you need to edit .htaccess make sure you make a copy, read up well on what you are trying to accomplish through htaccess and then test it on the web yourself. Make sure that those error pages are gone and that Google doesn't see errors.

ezeeviral · Feb 16, 2017

It harmful for your website ranking, if google found 404 error then stopped the crawling.

albert_Cage · Feb 17, 2017

Hi,

A 404 error is a type of error returned when a user attempts to access a page on the server that is not specified, does not exist, or otherwise can't be accessed. There are several error codes that indicate a problem returning a requested web page, but 404s are the most common and most talked about on the web.

There's no inherent penalty from Google for having a 404 error returned for a page on your site. A 404 error on one page does not affect the way Google sees the other pages of your site, nor does it incur some type of penalty if too many 404 errors exist. This is a myth, so there's no need to worry about 404 errors dragging down your rankings.

Datacentreplus · Feb 21, 2017

Yes and No.

Yes - Only if the 404 referred to a page that held weight. For example it was content that could be ranked and isn't. Or something is referring to an article that no longer exists, maybe an internal page links internally to another, if that isn't found, that simply is bad user experience.

No - If the 404's are for pages that never existed in the first place. Google can't penalise a page that was never there, and was never intended to be. It simply just wouldn't index it. In fact, Google wouldn't penalise use for a 404 in general. Are these 404 referring to a legitimate page? If not, move on.

socialagency · Feb 22, 2017

ericplotz1 said:
Yes it can be bad for your site and 500 of em' surely isn't good. If you have wordpress you can use a redirect plugin. Theres a few and it's been a while since I've used one, but I beleive it was the "Redirect All 404 To Homepage" or something like that.

Thats an easy way.

If its the plugin I used a few times in the pas, it allowed me to redirect whatever page I wanted and redirect it wherever I wanted it to. This is really what you want to do with pages that have any SEO value, because you can redirect to relevant pages and not send everything to the homepage. Which is the right way.

Or you can redirect in the htaccess file with:

Code:

redirect 301 /old/oldURL.com http://www.newURL.com

Yes I knew this method but I am wondering it will influence to keyword rankings or not.

CyberHour said:
"You should redirect all 404 error pages to the homepage or other relevant page."

Doing that will lead to the so called duplicate content.

How Google determined that was a duplicated content, I never heard about this before.

CyberHour said:
404 page it self wont hurt your SEO what , the issue is that if you don't have userfriendly 404 page (with relevant links to other articles etc etc) you will have high bunch rate which will lead to lower ranking.

Are you talking bounce rate in SEO?
Someone told me it is not a ranking factor so we don't need to care about it.

Datacentreplus said:
No - If the 404's are for pages that never existed in the first place. Google can't penalise a page that was never there, and was never intended to be. It simply just wouldn't index it. In fact, Google wouldn't penalise use for a 404 in general. Are these 404 referring to a legitimate page? If not, move on.

Yes but if that page is listed on page 3 or page 4 on Google and having many opportunities to get listed in first page then it should use a redirection or not?

CyberHour · Feb 22, 2017

"Are you talking bounce rate in SEO?
Someone told me it is not a ranking factor so we don't need to care about it."

Hello there,
We are 100% sure and can confirm that high bounce rate will lead in DECREASE of your SERP rank.

And there is simple logic behind this. If your competitor is #2 and you are #1 but his bounce rate is low compared to yours , this means for google that his content is more relevant for the users.

Here we are speaking only for those with average visit duration <20sec.

HostXNow · Feb 22, 2017

I think it's good to redirect 404 to sitemap so a user can find the page they were looking for or similar page. I don't see Google having a problem with that.

KelvinSmith · Mar 20, 2017

Absolutely!

Your site having 404 error is not good and this must be replaced ASAP!

Best bet is to run a tool like screaming frog, it should help you with all the errors your site has.

iserveradmin11 · Mar 25, 2017

Hello,
Error 404 and 500 are two different type or errors caused by different reasons.
So if 500 is occuring it is surely a big issue.

jerryperes · Mar 25, 2017

Yes, it is bad for website ranking. 404 error means page not found on your website that really makes a bad impression on users as well as for search engines. If you want to solve this error then use 301 permanent redirect from error page to new page.

officialchinmay · Apr 7, 2017

404 errors on invalid URLs do not harm your site's indexing or ranking in any way. It doesn't matter if there are 100 or 10 million,

Do 404 pages affect Google rankings?

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