Are these redirects damaging my rankings

[ClaireH-184886]

Hi, just been going through my google webmaster tools and i have found a number of soft 404 errors and was shocked to see these redirects going to my home page.

| URL | Response Code | Detected |
| --- | --- | --- |<colgroup><col style="width: 45px;"><col style="width: 80px;"><col><col style="width: 120px;"><col style="width: 90px;"></colgroup>
| | 1 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity |   | 7/25/13 |
| | 2 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1068-coronation-street-nick-proposes-to-leanne |   | 7/28/13 |
| | 3 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1086-coronation-street-fiz-nearly-gets-tyrone-in-trouble-with-kirsty |   | 7/28/13 |
| | 4 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1155-coronation-street-kylie-considers-telling-david-about-her-affair |   | 7/28/13 |
| | 5 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1157-coronation-street-fiz-is-worried-when-kirsty-pays-her-a-visit |   | 7/28/13 |
| | 6 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/750-actress-hilary-duff-is-sued-over-car-accident |   | 7/25/13 |
| | 7 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/843-what-your-dogs-bottom-scooting-behaviour%E2%80%99-really-meansI would have thought that the developer who upgraded my site would have either had these blocked or directed them to the correct page. i am now guessing that there are going to be hundreds of these appearing and would like some serious advice.normally with old pages i would have them going to the relevant articles or pages but it seems the developer has redirected hundreds of these to my home page, which i guess is going to confuse google. i would like to know if this will confuse google have all these pages going to my home page.i have tried to find out where the developer in my site has redirected the pages as they are not in my htaccess file, i use joomla.can anyone let me know what i should be doing with these to solve the problemmany thanks |

[MickEdwards]

I'm not a Joomla expert but if you have nothing in your .htaccess like 'ErrorDocument 404 index.php' then Joomla is probably handling the error redirection internally in maybe 'templates/system/error.php' or 'sef.php'

I understand settings in these files can override your .htaccess as well.

You can have any page as the 404 page as long as the header response is 404 - that is all Google needs to know.  The potential downside is user experience - I normally would suggest a custom 404 page with your menu system, or 301 permanent redirects to suitable alternatives (possibly homepage), as you suggest.

Webmaster Tools is not the best place to check current 404s.  I would do some live checking using say Screaming Frog and spot check the exact header responses using Fiddler.  I've seen some strange header codes coming from a problematic Joomla setup.

[ClaireH-184886]

the problem i have is, these upgrade files like this one

staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity

this is a live article, so google is seeing the live url address which is http://www.in2town.co.uk/gastric-band-hypnotherapy/gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity

and then they are seeing the upgrade file which is

www.in2town.co.u,/staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity

all the upgrade files have been redirected to my home page, not sure this is right.

[MickEdwards]

Why don't you put /staging1/ in your robots.txt, then remove that directory from index in Webmaster Tools.  Backing that up with canonical tags in case any similar slip through the net.

[ClaireH-184886]

that sounds like a great solution, can you explain how i would do this, as never done this before

[MickEdwards]

You have a robots.txt file in your root - http://www.in2town.co.uk/robots.txt >> add

Disallow: /staging1/

In Webmaster Tools go to Google Index >> Remove URLs >> Create a new removal request >> enter http://www.in2town.co.uk/staging1/ >> Continue >> set Reason to remove directory >> Submit Request.

For canonical refer to http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions

I hope this helps.

[ClaireH-184886]

thank you for this, will do this now, many thanks for the great advice