Is Page Not Found Bad for SEO?

[Maxwell]

Hello Guys

I my google webmaster tools, I have a report that my site has more "pages not found", does this affect keyword rankings or it's bad for SEO?

What is your opinion?

 

[vishwa]

Is page not found or 404 error page will drastically impact your site SEO. better you redirect your all not found pages to your home page url.

 

[PTTed]

It depends on what pages are 404.

If it is a real page that you are trying to get ranked, and people are getting a 404 error, then yes it is very bad for SEO for that page. Not only is it bad for SEO for that page, but it is just bad period because people aren't finding the page you want them to.

But, I could build links to non-existing pages on your website. When the Googlebot crawls my links and tries to follow them, they would lead to 404 errors on your website because those pages don't exist. Or I could have a bot try to load a bunch of nonexistent pages on your site one after another and that would also produce 404 errors.

The vast majority of websites get a number of 404 errors for pages that don't exist and probably never existed. That is quite common and it is only going to affect the ranking of those pages that get the 404 error (if those pages were even indexed to begin with, which they probably weren't).

So really, the only thing you need to be overly concerned about is if people are getting 404 errors for a page that is supposed to exist on your website and for some reason it is returning an error instead of loading the page. Other than that, I wouldn't worry too much about them. In my experience, it just doesn't matter unless the error is for a page that is supposed to exist on your site and is supposed to get indexed in Google.

Also, if you buy a domain that previously existed and you see a lot of traffic going to a specific 404 page, then you probably want to either create a page for that URL or else maybe 301 redirect it so that traffic lands at an existing page.

 

[djone]

If your targeted page shows page not found then yes, it is bad for SEO. So you just have to try to redirect those pages or solve that errors.

 

[ulterios]

Hello Guys

I my google webmaster tools, I have a report that my site has more "pages not found", does this affect keyword rankings or it's bad for SEO?

What is your opinion?

When you were in Google Webmasters (Search Console now) did you get that message when you were doing a "Fetch as Google"? If so, make sure you try doing the fetch a second time. I have found that sometimes the fetches don't work right on the first try. I doesn't happen often, but it does happen.

 

[roggy]

roggy

Fetch as Google to help Google index your URL faster by sending a bot to your article URL and crawl it in a schedule.

It didn't work sometimes because the problem on Google tools or your web pages are too complex to analyze. I think if your page is simple content and layout, it can show without any errors.

 

[ulterios]

ulterios

I know what it is and what it does. Sometimes there's an error when Googlebot is fetching it and your site is fine. When the error comes up usually just do the fetch again and it will be fine.

 

[UVM]

Remember that unless your entire site becomes NOT FOUND you will not see an instant drop in ranking.

Search engines understand that dead pages are normal and they happen, so they will be okay with it to some extent.

It is best to 301 redirect any dead pages to the most relevant page you have.

Don't just leave them. I have also found that if you don't want do a redirect at least suggest 5-10 other articles on your 404 not found page.