SEO Tycoon

**skyflier** · 03-13-2009, 06:17 AM

I have rewrite all dynamic urls of my site to dynamic urls and have deleted all the unwanted urls/pages and now there are thousand of 404 errors in my google wmt

I want to know is there any penalty for 404 and will it effect my site ranking , remember all those pages are unwanted all other pages are redirected poperly using 301 code

If there is any penalty should i redirect all 404 to main page

**chrishirst** · 03-13-2009, 06:24 AM

Why oh why, would you think there would be a "penalty" for such things as pages that "go missing". It's an everyday state of affairs for websites. Pages move (redirect them) pages become obsolete or out of date and get deleted. No big deal.
SEs deal with it by removing such pages from their index (as they should)

Quote:

should i redirect all 404 to main page

Absolutely NOT.
You should however, have a custom 404 page (that returns a 404 response) to help real visitors.

**skyflier** · 03-13-2009, 06:27 AM

Ok thanks alot

for 404 i am using google 404 code which is given in wmt

**chrishirst** · 03-13-2009, 06:31 AM

Quote:

for 404 i am using google 404 code which is given in wmt

and this means?

**megan isla** · 04:25 PM

404 error can harm your website Ranking with Search Engines as well as being a Turn-Off for Visitors. A search engine that repeatedly gets a 404 error will de-list the page from its index. Too many 404 error pages on your website and its ranking with the search engines will suffer.

**chrishirst** · 04:50 PM

Quote:

404 error can harm your website Ranking with Search Engines

WRONG!!!!!

Quote:

as well as being a Turn-Off for Visitors.

Only for the stupid who don't have the sense to create a 404 page to help visitors

Quote:

A search engine that repeatedly gets a 404 error will de-list the page from its index.

WELL OF COURSE THEY WOULD it's not there any more!!!!!!
WHY the hell would the search engines list a page THAT DOES NOT EXIST ANYMORE!!!

Quote:

Too many 404 error pages on your website and its ranking with the search engines will suffer.

Complete BS

**chrishirst** · 03-13-2009, 05:06 PM

The quality of copy and paste signature link spammers has definitely taken a downturn

webpageaddons.com/404-error-301-redirect.htm

**zeruel** · 03-16-2009, 12:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by megan isla

404 error can harm your website Ranking with Search Engines as well as being a Turn-Off for Visitors. A search engine that repeatedly gets a 404 error will de-list the page from its index. Too many 404 error pages on your website and its ranking with the search engines will suffer.

I guess you really don't know what you are talking about.

In fact, it can improve seo in some ways. It helps you not to lose the traffic you can get from the moved pages or deleted pages.

http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archiv...e_seo_wit.html

Creating User Friendly 404 Pages:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000819.html

**chrishirst** · 03-16-2009, 04:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zeruel

I guess you really don't know what you are talking about.

Actually it wasn't this poster that didn't originally not know.

The site the quote was stolen from didn't know either and "megan isla" didn't know enough to realise that copy & pasting junk is not necessarily the best was to spam forums for signature links.
Well, not this forum anyway.

**swity** · 03-16-2009, 07:44 AM

Search Engines don't like error pages. So, ranking surely will down. If you submit this in Google webmaster tool removal pages then it can be benefited from ranking point of view.

**chrishirst** · 03-16-2009, 08:09 AM

Oh please, for goodness sake get a clue about the real world instead of digesting the half-assed drivel that pollutes the SEO/SEM world

404 errors are a fact of life with websites and SE engineers are obviously more aware of this than most of you are.

**gravy834** · 11:08 AM

I agree that 404 pages are "a fact of life" but they cannot be overlooked.

I've recently found that if there's a significant amount of 404's and unreachable URLs encountered by the crawlers that you DO get penalised!

A friends site dropped from position 3 down to 182 for his main keyword. It turns out that 70% of his site (in Google's eyes) was returning 404 pages. We added some 301 redirects and before you know it, he was back in position 3.

You can't just ignore 404 errors found in WMT, Google lists them there for a reason, they need to be rectified. They want you to provide the best user experience possible and 404's aren't going to help! Think of it as spring cleaning and general good practice to make sure there are no loose ends and dead pages, after all they may have external links pointing to them.

**gravy834** · 04-02-2009, 11:07 AM

Actually just found this video from Google which confirms my thoughts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntJhrM7CU5I