Using disavow tool for 404s

[IceIcebaby]

Hey Community,

Got a question about the disavow tool for you. My site is getting thousands of 404 errors from old blog/coupon/you name it sites linking to our old URL structure (which used underscores and ended in .jsp).

It seems like the webmasters of these sites aren't answering back or haven't updated their sites in ages so it's returning 404 errors. If I disavow these domains and/or links will it clear out these 404 errors in Google? I read the GWT help page on it, but it didn't seem to answer this question.

Feel free to ask any questions that may help you understand the issue more.

Thanks for your help,
-Reed

[WilliamKammer]

I wouldn't recommend using the disavow tool for this. The disavow tool is used to clean up spammy links that were not gained naturally.

A better solution is to use 301 redirects and redirect the 404'd pages to the new pages that work on your website. That way users will land where they should if they click the links, and Google will still give you juice from those links.

Here's a place to get started on how t do that: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en

[DougRoberts]

The disavow tool isn't going to "fix" these 404s.

404's aren't always a bad thing. The warnings in GWT are just there to make you aware that there's potentially a problem with your site. It doesn't mean there IS a problem.

Is there content on your site that visitors clicking on these links should be arriving at? In which case you want to implement 301 redirects so that your visitors arrive on the most appropriate pate.

If there's nothing relevant on the site any more - a 404 error is perfectly acceptable.

Of course, you want to make sure that your 404 page gives the visitors the best chance/incentive to dig into the content on your site. Adding a nice obvious search box and/or links to most popular content may be a good idea. If you're getting lots of visitors from a particular site that you can maybe tailor your 404 message depending on the referrer.

The drawback here is that links pointing at 404 error pages won't pass link-equity. If there is value in the links, and you're happy that they're going to be seen a natural/authentic as far as google is concerned then you can always 301 redirect these.

Where you really should pay attention is where you have internal links on your site that are reporting 404s. These are under your control and you really don't want to give you visitors a poor experience with lots of broken links on your site.

[IceIcebaby]

Thanks Doug, really helpful answer.

I am getting thousands of 404's but when I dive into them the majority of the 404 URLs can't be found in any of the "linked from" examples GWT gives me.

I think 301 redirects are the best option like you said and/or having a good 404 page.

Thanks,
-Reed

[IceIcebaby]

Hey Doug, had another question for you. A big majority (90% of 18,000+ errors) of our 404 errors are coming from .jsp files from our old website.

Of course, it's not ideal to manually update or redirect these, but possibly write a script to automatically change them. Would it be beneficial to add this .jsp to our robots.txt file?