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Posted by William J. Terrell
William J. Terrell
17,403 Points

Help with 404 Pages

Good afternoon!

I am trying to figure out a problem with either our website's HTTP configurations or the way Google is reading them.

We have a lot of old URLs floating around on social media and the like which do not match the current structure of our site.

These are apparently returning "Soft 404s" - meaning that the Google knows the URL doesn't exist, but is not getting an actual 404 error.

One such URL is http://www.williamwoods.edu/academics/art/index.asp. If I enter this URL in an HTTP Status Checker, such as the one at http://www.urlitor.com/, it shows that it gets redirected to the 404.aspx page, which returns a 404 status code. However, when I enter this URL into Googles "Fetch as Google", it shows that it received a 302 code and says "The information has been moved to this page", and lists the 404.aspx page.

What that means, then, is that Google believes the 404 page itself contains the content for /academics/art/index.asp, and so it keeps crawling it, instead of removing it from its index.

I am not as knowledgeable about HTTP status codes, or their setup, as I would like to be, but I want to be sure that I am doing everything correctly. If someone could help me figure out what needs to be done, it would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if you would know of any resources where I can go to that might help me become an "HTTP Know-it-all", I'd be happy to check them out. :)

Thanks!

Sam Deighton II
Sam Deighton II
25,602 Points
Sam Deighton II
Sam Deighton II
25,602 Points

Generally you want to set up 301/302 redirects from the dead links to a new link in the current site structure.

I am not familiar with asp/aspx so i couldnt give you specifics there, but generally you can edit your .htaccess file in the server.

I also found this article that may clear up your question on soft 404s https://www.searchenginejournal.com/fix-404-vs-soft-404-errors/208046/

1 Answer

William J. Terrell
William J. Terrell
17,403 Points
William J. Terrell
William J. Terrell
17,403 Points

It seems that delivering a 404.aspx page instead of a .html version resolved the issue. The number of Soft 404s that Google has recorded is steadily decreasing - so I'm guessing it just took a while for Google to pick up on the correction.

We use Windows Server, which doesn't have a .htaccess file, so I'm guessing it's just a comparability thing - Windows Server wants you to deliver only Windows .NET pages.

Thanks!