New Site Structure and 404s. Should I redirect everything?

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Hi fellow Mozzers,

I've recently re-released a site and also took the opportunity to change/clean up the URL structure. As a result of this Google is starting to report many 404s such as below;

blog/tag/get-fit/

blog/tag/top-presents/

Most of these 404 errors are from tag or category pages which simply don't exist any more (because they were unnecessary, crap or irrelevant). Although there's also a few posts I've removed.

My question is whether it's worth redirecting all these tags and pages to the root directory of the site's new blog (as there isn't really a new page which is similar or appropriate) or just to leave them as 404 errors. Bearing in mind;

1. They don't really rank for anything

2. There's little if any links pointing to these pages

Thanks.

[TomRayner]

Provided that there aren't an absolute ton of them (like thousands/tens of thousands), then I would 301 redirect them.  If there was a massive ammount, too many redirects in your .htaccess can slow your site, but that's only in extreme cases.

Having said that, if there are no links pointing to the page and the URLs aren't in the sitemap, then eventually Google will stop trying to crawl them (as there's nothing pointing to the URL).  I'd just 301 redirect anyway - any little bit of "strength/juice" that they did have could help another page.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Hi Tom,

thanks for the reply.

Do you think it's fine to re-direct them all to the blog's root page?

The concern I have is that, there's probably about 100 pages and I won't be re-directing to a page which is really relevant to the original. I don't want it to appear manipulative in anyway.

[ThompsonPaul]

You've pretty much answered all the standard  questions that would lead to a decision, Alex - and the answer is "no".

• Do the existing pages have any rank? Nope
• Any valuable incoming links? Nope
• Does the new site have equivalent or equally relevant content to point to? No again

So you knew exactly the questions to ask, and your instincts were right on. Perfect scenario where the urls should just be left to die.

Technically, this sort of url should return a 410 Gone server response, but that would take some extra coding. Returning 404 Not Found in this instance is pretty common and will do the job.

Hope that helps;

Paul

[TomRayner]

Your mileage may vary, but I've redirected a lot more than 100 before to a root domain and everything has gone OK.  If you could split it up, it might ease your worries - but as you said earlier, there isn't a relevant page to point these URLs to, so the root domain should suffice.

I would definitely consider what Paul has to say below, which is what I was trying to get at in my second point.  There's also a point that if 404s are a perfectly normal occurrence for websites.  Again, provided that there isn't a gregarious amount (which ~100 definitely isn't), it won't be an issue to return a few 404s.  It only would be if it interrupted a user journey, which I can't imagine /tag/ subfolders would.

Either way mate, I think you'll be fine how you pursue.

[PeterAlexLeigh]

Hi Paul,

Yes, that's where my thoughts were heading - it's nice to get confirmation

A 410 code?... interesting. I hadn't considered that

Thanks

[PeterAlexLeigh]

ok, I'll probably seek out any pages with the chance of link juice and get those re-directed to the root.

Anything which is utterly pointless or too rubbish to care about, I think I'll let die.

Thanks again

[ThompsonPaul]

The 410 Gone essentially means "I'm aware that page used to be here, but it has been taken away on purpose and it won't be coming back". Whereas 404 Not Found means "I don't know anything about that page - as far as I know it never existed".

You can see how the first scenario applies to your pages much more specifically than the second.

But as Tom points out, if you don't have the URLs in your sitemap or xml sitemap and nobody's linking to them, the 404s will eventually cause the Search engines to drop the URLs from their index.

Frankly I'd just let the URLs drop and spend the time on something more valuable. Go earn a few more links

Paul