How to remove "Not found" URLs from google

[AlexanderWhite]

This post is deleted!

[kwoolf]

Hi Alexander,

First thing is to make sure your site wasn't down the last time Google indexed your site. That would be one thing to cause all those 404s.

If there was nothing wrong with your site, then note the referring pages of the 404 links, then go to each page to view the source code. In the source page, search for the dead link Google says is there. I see you're using Bluefish editor, and I'm not familiar with that technology, but it's possible these link might be dynamically created by your software or some sort of widget. If you find a pattern, perhaps it's a setting somewhere or a widget that's adding these URLs. For example, some e-commerce sites add a cross-sell or related items widgets somewhere on the page that create these links without you actually adding them. Something like this could be happening here as well.

I also see links to your database files. Since you're using Apache, these folders and files should be blocked in your htaccess, then you can edit your robots.txt to block any directory containing links you don't want indexed. For example, your search pages and cart pages shouldn't need to be indexed. Another thing you might consider is setting parameters in your WMT to tell Google and Bing what to do when they run into parameters in your URLs.

After you figure out what's going on with these 404 errors, I suggest you follow best practices and convert your URLs to lowercase (or at least stay consistent) and then change all underscores to hyphens as suggested by Matt Cutts.

[byoung]

Hi Alexander,

I did a quick check on several of the pages you showed on your post. Yikes! many of these are indeed broken.

404's are a big concern with user experience, when a user experience is disrupted, it reflects poorly on the website and the brand.  404 errors are the result of the following:

• A website redesign
• For ecommerce is common to see these errors if product pages that have been altered, removed, or the product was discontinued – which means the URL was altered or the page was deleted.
• Spelling errors within the page source of the link – whether internal or external

Before you decide to get these pages out of the search engines, find out if you can fix them  (i.e. a spelling error).

Here are some detailed instructions to tackle the problem:

• Go back to GWT crawl section where you found the broken pages.
• Click on the Not found tab
• You will see a graph with the current 404 error pages
• You will also see the broken URL's at the bottom of the page

Download the file as a .csv or click each specific URL to see more information.

• GTW will provide you with a window with "error details" and a “Linked from” tab.
• Click the Link from tab.
• GTW will show you the linking source to the particular 404.

_ Side Note: Another great way to find the linking source of your 404 pages is by running the Xenu program (free tool!)_

Once you find out the linking source of the 404 error then determine if the issue is caused by a misspell, or if the service/product is no longer available.

• If the error is an internal misspell, then correct it at the source level, easy!
• If the error is an external misspell or the product was deleted/moved, then politely reach out to the external site and request that they update their link appropriately to a working page.

If the service/product is no longer available then you have a few options to take care of the 404 problem.

1)      301 redirect the pages to the next best source that will be useful to your users. Maybe is the category page of the product that no longer exists. NOTE: always use 301 redirect, keep away from temporary redirects 302's. Your website runs on an Apache server so you will need to update your .htaccess file. Here is a great resource to help you get started (http://goo.gl/LCKZ7N)

2)      You can also use your robots meta directives to tell the bots to discontinue any future indexing (noindex), remove the current pages from the database cache (noarchive) AND  prevent Google from showing a snippet (description) under your Google listing (nosnippet)

3)      Request Removal: Once you update your link sources and Google re-crawls your site it will likely notice that the page has been updated/redirected, and the 404 will disappear. However, if it is a high priority or if the error remains lingering, you may submit a URL removal request in Webmaster Tools.

Kevin provided great advice regarding the robots.txt pertaining search pages.  Indexing these parameters create duplicate content problems.

Once you feel the issues have been resolved, go back to your GWT select the links that have been resolved and “Mark them as Fixed”. Marking as fixed will suggest to Google that the link is no longer broken and will virtually send a request to re-crawl the page.

Continue checking your GTW tool on a periodic basis to ensure these crawling errors have been resolved and to take care of any new ones.

Hope this information is helpful, cheers!

~by

[AlanMosley]

You may not have created the pages, but do you have links that point to them?

[SharewarePros]

Dear Alexander,

You should check on WMT if the source page which links to the bad url is a internal page, in this case fix the error, it could affect your site health and of course your rank, and if they comes from external sources, if the source site is and authority, I recommends to use 301 pointing to the page where should be linked, if not the 404 from external sources not causes any issue on your site.

Hope it helps

[AlexanderWhite]

I don't know much about the platform. How much it would cost me if I hire someone to fix it? These pages were created automatically. I haven't used these urls in interlinking.

[SharewarePros]

Dear Alexander,

You should provide access to Google WMT to take a look at the source of your 404, also provide access to your CMS if the issue is cause by your system and even provide access to your hosting server to work on your HTACCES file to 301 or 410 pages according needs.

You can email me at webmaster @ freesharewaredepot . com (Im the SEO of this directory)

Hope it helps