Soft 404 error messages

[Rain-shine]

I really hope someone can help/advise me.

Google webmaster tools has recently started to report an increasing number of soft 404 errors from my site - I am at over 300 now!!!

When I did a spot check on these pages however they ARE there. I don't understand? Could these be timeout errors for example? Most of pages display images but they are there!

Please can anyone in the know advise me on this before it gets any worse - I have a wordpress seo redirection plugin already in use on my site but dont want to go redirecting pages that ARE actually there.

How can I quickly solve this and how can I stop it from happening again???

Many thanks in advance for your time.

Laura

 

[jacobc]

Bit difficult to know without some examples - feel free to PM me some examples if you don't want to post them publicly.

 

[andygambles]

Are the pages returning 200 OK? If you give some examples?

 

[andygambles]

Are the pages returning 200 OK? If you give some examples?

 

[Rain-shine]

Thanks for the responses.

This is an example of a page returning the error http://www.rain-shine.co.uk/uv-suits/ but looks fine from my end. Very confusing!

It returns 200 ok too so really not sure why this is happening.

Any help/advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Laura

 

[Shopclicks]

Your cached attachment pages haven't been re-cached as yet and are resolving to a 404 error page. I take it you recently made a change to your site, hence the redirect you mentioned?

 

[Rain-shine]

Your cached attachment pages haven't been re-cached as yet and are resolving to a 404 error page. I take it you recently made a change to your site, hence the redirect you mentioned?

Thanks for your response Shopclicks.

It was sometime ago (ie about 2 years ago) we did a whole resite design and temporarily had to redirect everything to a different url.

I dont understand why it is NOW showing these and how to fix them?

Thanks

Laura

 

[justinaldridge]

Yes, they could be legacy errors. That page you refer to is definitely indexed: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:www.rain-shine.co.uk/uv-suits/&hl=en&gws_rd=ssl

 

[Rain-shine]

Yes, they could be legacy errors. That page you refer to is definitely indexed: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:www.rain-shine.co.uk/uv-suits/&hl=en&gws_rd=ssl

Thanks Justin. Is there a way to let Google know that this is the case as it worries me that they are NOW only beginning to see show these - these soft 404 errors were not being reported even a month ago.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Laura

 

[justinaldridge]

Yes, in Webmaster Tools (Search Console) just select the errors and click the "Mark as fixed" button to let Google know that they shouldn't be an issue anymore.

 

[Rain-shine]

fabulous Many thanks for your advice Justin