Do I need to redirect soft 404s that I got from Google Webmaster Tools?

[esiow2013]

Hi guys,

I got almost 1000+ soft 404s from GWT. All of the soft 404s produce 200 HTTP status code but the URLs are something like the following:

http://www.example.com/search/house-for-rent

(query used: house for rent)

http://www.example.com/search/-----------rent

(query used:-------rent)

There are no listings that match these queries and there is an advanced search that is visible in these pages.

Here are my questions:

1. Do I need to redirect each page to its appropriate landing page?

2. Do I need to add user sitemap or a list of URLs where they can search for other properties?

Any suggestions would help.

[SanketPatel]

Hi,

As per your URL, I think best solution is to block "search" directory in Robots.txt, then Google will not able to to access those pages so no error in GWT. OR you can also create default page for query which don't have any result in database.

[esiow2013]

What do you mean by default page? Is it a customized 404 page?

Thanks a lot man! I appreciate it.

[SanketPatel]

Yes Customize 404 whenever your database don't have have search results for user query then you can redirect them to that page.

Have you considered of blocking "search" results directory in Robots.txt because those pages are dynamic, they are not actually physical page so its better you block them.

[MagicDude4Eva]

I would do the following:

• For valid searches returned create a proper canoncial URL (and then decide if you want to do a index,follow or a noindex,follow on the result pages). You might not necessarily want to index search results, but rather a structure of items/pages on your site.
• I would generally not index search results (rather have your pages being crawled through category structures, sitemaps and RSS feeds)
• It does sound though that the way you implemented the search is wrong - it should not result in a soft 404 - it could be as easy as making the canonical for your search just "/search" (without any search terms) and if no results are found display options to the user for search refinements

The only time I have seen soft 404s with us is in cases where we removed product pages and then displayed a generic "product not available" page with some upselling options. In this case we set a status of 410 (GONE) which resolved the soft 404 issue.

The advantage of the 410 is that your application makes the decision that a page is gone, whereas a 404 could really be just a wrong linked URL.

[eyepaq]

I would never index or let google crawl search pages - very dangerous ground.

[MagicDude4Eva]

I think if it is done carefully it adds quite a lot of value. A proper site taxonomy is obviously always better and more predictable.

[esiow2013]

Hi mate,

I already added the following syntax to my website's robots.txt:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /search/

I have checked the dynamic pages or URLs produced by search box (ex.http://www.domain.com/search/jhjehfjehfefe) but they are still showing in Google.com and there's still 1000+ soft 404s in my Google webmaster tools account.

I appreciate your help.

Thanks man!

[MarloSchneider]

I know I am way late to the party, but MagicDude4Eva, have you had success just putting a noindex header on the soft 404 pages?

That sounds like the easiest way to deal with this problem, if it works, especially since a lot of sites use dynamic URLs for product search that you don't want to de-index.

Can you have multiple 404 pages? Otherwise redirecting an empty search results page to your 404 page could be quite confusing..

[MagicDude4Eva]

It depends what you want to achieve. If the 404s are pages which no longer exist than it will be the fastest to use the GWMT removal tool to remove the page pattern and also add a noindex in robots.txt. In addition obviously returning a 404.

The soft 404 is a case where content is not found but HTTP-status 200 is returned - this needs to change if you currently serve non-existing pages.

We generally do the following:

• Content which we know does not exist anymore (i.e. a deleted product page or a deleted product category) is served with a SC_GONE (410) and we provide cross-selling information (i.e. display products from related categories). This works great and we have seen a boost in indexed content.
• URLs which don't exist will go through a standard 404 - this is intentional as our monitoring will pick this up. If it is a legitimate 404 put of SEO value, we will do a redirect if it makes sense, or just let Google drop it over time (takes sometimes up to 4 weeks)

You can have multiple versions of 404 pages, but this would need to be coded out - i.e. in your application server you would define 404page which then programmatically would display content depending on what you want to do.

[esiow2013]

Thanks guys for your inputs. By the way, this issue is already resolved last year. Thanks again!