Do 404 pages affect Google rankings?

[socialagency]

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]

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:

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

 

[samimnoorzaitgc]

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]

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.