Loads of 404 errors

[Ian J]

Looking in Google Webmaster Tools it seems that Google has come up with loads of 404 errors and I'm wondering if these might hurt my site's rankings.

Some of these relate to old web pages that were once redirected to new pages but the redirect seems to have disappeared but the vast majority relate to non existent pages connected with cron jobs.

I have just looked at the site now and instead of just the domain name the full url seems to be http://www.factoringsolutions.co.uk/?doing_wp_cron=1456743617.2145409584045410156250

As Google is listing these as crawl errors will they harm my rankings?

 

[ecenica]

Are you using a plugin called BackupBuddy by chance?

 

[Ian J]

Are you using a plugin called BackupBuddy by chance?

No. I use the UpdraftPlus - Backup/Restore plugin

 

[ecenica]

Ah ok - only asked as we've seen issues with BackupBuddy adding doing_wp_con.

I would seem UpdraftPlus uses a similar WP setting (ALTERNATE_WP_CRON) to process the backups, hence the strange URLs.

It's worth chasing the plugin developer for a solution as it would seem it causes duplication issues.

https://moz.com/community/q/doing_wp_cron-urls

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

Looking in Google Webmaster Tools it seems that Google has come up with loads of 404 errors and I'm wondering if these might hurt my site's rankings.

Some of these relate to old web pages that were once redirected to new pages but the redirect seems to have disappeared but the vast majority relate to non existent pages connected with cron jobs.

I have just looked at the site now and instead of just the domain name the full url seems to be http://www.factoringsolutions.co.uk/?doing_wp_cron=1456743617.2145409584045410156250

As Google is listing these as crawl errors will they harm my rankings?

Yes, 404 errors can harm your rankings, just because user experiences totally sucks while meet blank or error page, and global indicators of your website just get decreased.

But stay cool, you won't notice huge changes, even if left it the way it is right now.

To fix the problem, just put this command into .htaccess file

Hope that helps.

RewriteEngine On
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com

 

[justinaldridge]

It's very rare that 404 pages can harm a website. The only time they can is if you are internally linking to the pages that 404. If they are not linked to from within your site then you can in essence forget about them.

 

[Cromulent]

Yes, 404 errors can harm your rankings, just because user experiences totally sucks while meet blank or error page, and global indicators of your website just get decreased.

This is totally wrong. 404 errors do not effect your site search ranking at all. This is exactly the type of misinformation that SEO "experts" like to say in order to get business. How do I know this is rubbish? Because Google have said themselves that 404 errors have no effect on site ranking and in fact they prefer you to return a 404 error rather than a redirect to different content.

See their blog post here:

https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html

Note that this was posted in 2011 so you are at least 5 years out of date with your information.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

O really?

You just paste source, so let see what we have got

https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html

Google version:

"...Instead of returning a 404, you could 301 redirect the misspelled URL to the correct URL and capture the intended traffic from that link. You can also make sure that, when users do land on a 404 page on your site, you help them find what they were looking for rather than just saying “404 Not found."

This is exactly how proposed by me .htaccess files works.

Your version:

they prefer you to return a 404 error rather than a redirect

404 disadvantages:

- lose backlinks authority,
- increase global bounce rate,
- increase global exit rate,
- decrease global session time

404 and high bounce rate:

http://www.zimana.com/blog/analytics-tips-how-to-manage-404s-to-reduce-bounce-rates/

404 and high exit rate:

https://pacnetservices.com/is-your-404-page-driving-away-customers/

The diferrence between "SEO theorist - failed SEO" and "SEO Expert" is that first one pray to Matt Cutts, read and believe in every googlewebmastercentral news, second one get practice.

First one after few years of failures finally decide to put his whole advertising effort into - profile signature, second one - move on.

Cheers

 

[Ian J]

I've just checked the settings for Updraft backup and it seems that although the plugin is installed it has never been set up to run so no backups have been made and I guess that this can't be responsible for the wp_cron suffixes after all

 

[justinaldridge]

This is totally wrong. 404 errors do not effect your site search ranking at all.

Not strictly true. Google's own wording here states:

"Generally, 404 errors don’t impact your site’s ranking in Google, and you can safely ignore them"

It doesn't say they don't it's just that in most cases they don't.

They can be harmful if they create a bad user experience within your website, e.g., lots of internal links to 404 pages.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

404 errors do not effect your site search ranking at all.

You're really funny mate. If 404 do not effect ranking at all, just replace you index.html with 404.html (for example) and see what happens.

 

[Cromulent]

O really?

You just paste source, so let see what we have got

https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html

Google version:

"...Instead of returning a 404, you could 301 redirect the misspelled URL to the correct URL and capture the intended traffic from that link. You can also make sure that, when users do land on a 404 page on your site, you help them find what they were looking for rather than just saying “404 Not found."

This is exactly how proposed by me .htaccess files works.

Your version:



404 disadvantages:

- lose backlinks authority,
- increase global bounce rate,
- increase global exit rate,
- decrease global session time

404 and high bounce rate:

http://www.zimana.com/blog/analytics-tips-how-to-manage-404s-to-reduce-bounce-rates/

404 and high exit rate:

https://pacnetservices.com/is-your-404-page-driving-away-customers/

The diferrence between "SEO theorist - failed SEO" and "SEO Expert" is that first one pray to Matt Cutts, read and believe in every googlewebmastercentral news, second one get practice.

First one after few years of failures finally decide to put his whole advertising effort into - profile signature, second one - move on.

Cheers

Did you read the article at all?

The specifically said if you have a 404 for misspelled URLs you should 301 redirect. If the content no longer exists you should return a 404. This is very simple stuff.

You should not 301 redirect content that no longer exists to some other random content such as your home page because people will click a link, realise that the content they wanted to see isn't actually on the page and then just bounce off.

HTTP error codes have been around since the start of the web and should be used properly. If the content does not exist use 404. If it does exist but has moved or you visited a misspelled URL then 301 redirect to the correct page.

All websites delete content at some point and by doing so they should always return a 404. Not doing so breaks the web and causes visitors so much trouble that they will stop trusting your website.

The diferrence between "SEO theorist - failed SEO" and "SEO Expert" is that first one pray to Matt Cutts, read and believe in every googlewebmastercentral news, second one get practice.

First one after few years of failures finally decide to put his whole advertising effort into - profile signature, second one - move on.

Cheers

Most of what you said is rubbish but this is the biggest load of rubbish. For a start my signature has nothing to do with SEO. I don't even pretend to offer SEO to any customers. I do on the other hand have a track record of releasing new websites that rank pretty highly in Google from the start for some targeted key words.

Second of all Google are the ONLY ones in the world that have any idea of what real SEO is because they are the ones that own the algorithm that actually ranks your website. Anyone who says they know better than Google is liar and a fool.

You don't have access to the algorithm that Google use and thus the only way you can work out how it actually works is by basing your information off what Google has decided to release to the public.

So yeah if it comes down to a choice between listening to Google and listening to some snake oil merchant such as yourself I'll go with Google every time.

 

[Marek Skoczylas]

Did you read the article at all?

The specifically said if you have a 404 for misspelled URLs you should 301 redirect. If the content no longer exists you should return a 404. This is very simple stuff.

You should not 301 redirect content that no longer exists to some other random content such as your home page because people will click a link, realise that the content they wanted to see isn't actually on the page and then just bounce off.

HTTP error codes have been around since the start of the web and should be used properly. If the content does not exist use 404. If it does exist but has moved or you visited a misspelled URL then 301 redirect to the correct page.

All websites delete content at some point and by doing so they should always return a 404. Not doing so breaks the web and causes visitors so much trouble that they will stop trusting your website.



Most of what you said is rubbish but this is the biggest load of rubbish. For a start my signature has nothing to do with SEO. I don't even pretend to offer SEO to any customers. I do on the other hand have a track record of releasing new websites that rank pretty highly in Google from the start for some targeted key words.

Second of all Google are the ONLY ones in the world that have any idea of what real SEO is because they are the ones that own the algorithm that actually ranks your website. Anyone who says they know better than Google is liar and a fool.

You don't have access to the algorithm that Google use and thus the only way you can work out how it actually works is by basing your information off what Google has decided to release to the public.

So yeah if it comes down to a choice between listening to Google and listening to some snake oil merchant such as yourself I'll go with Google every time.

More tears please

 

[justinaldridge]

There are many instances where it is preferable to redirect a non-existent page to another similar page on a website. Google ignores any inbound links to a page that returns a 404. If that page has managed to get some good links to it then it would be a waste not to 301 redirect it to another similar page on the site and keep the benefit of those links.

There are many times when you may want to take several pages and merge them into one. Don't 404 them, redirect them all to the new one.

A business may stop offering a service. There's no point just dropping those pages and letting them 404. Redirect users to the main services page instead.

There are many instances where it is preferable to redirect instead of a returning a 404.

However, we have a client in the recruitment niche. For years they decided never to drop old job listings. They had over 500,000 "orphaned" job pages. This caused them to be negatively impacted by Panda. We quickly 404'd all those pages and they have since recovered much of their rankings.

There are situations where 404's are desirable and others where they are not.

 

[dexterash]

I've just checked the settings for Updraft backup and it seems that although the plugin is installed it has never been set up to run so no backups have been made and I guess that this can't be responsible for the wp_cron suffixes after all

I think it would be better to restrict (via robots.txt, for example) GoogleBot's access to any wordpress-cron related references/links. That way you should also get rid of any 404; you could also try to de-index those files/references. I wouldn't want them to appear in any Google search.