Popup windows are coming up as 404 error in moz reports.

[BenRWoodard]

We have several links showing up as 404 errors because of the way our site is set up.

I want to know if this is hurting our ranking because Google sees it as 404 errors or is it just something I can ignore because it works for the user?

If it is hurting our quality and therefore our rankings, how can I correct it so that best practices are used?

I have attached an image of the links and here is an example page --> http://www.sourcemedicalequipment.com/Perch-Polyurethane-Industrial-Stool-18-25-p/idst2.htm

The links in the description section have anchor text "All 3 Choices" and result in a popup information page.  If you cut and paste the URL's that they are redirecting to end in a 404 but if you use the link on the page it results in a popup information window.

Hope I explained that well.  Thanks for your help!

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[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Ben,

Sorry for the late response - hope the question is still relevant to you.

Short answer - yes, this could cause a problem, depending on how many 404's you are creating. The first thing you want to do is check with Google Webmaster Tools. Look at your Crawl Error report and see if Google is also reporting these URLs as 404'ing - my suspicion is that they are.

Is it just one URL that is 404'ing, or several? If it's only one, that you realistically don't have much to worry about, but it's always best practices to fix it.

Solutions:

1. Remove the 404. Let the page load in it's own browser window if need be. If you want to keep the page out of search results, there are better ways to do it.

2. Add a meta robots "NOINDEX" tag to the popup page. This will keep it out of the index.

3. After the page is gone from the index, add a nofollow to the link, or block the directory using robots.txt.

Regardless, there are quite a few ways to tackle this. Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!