Hundreds of 404 Pages, What Should I do?

[calindaniel]

Hi,

My client just had there website redeveloped within wordpress. I just ran a crawl errors test for their website using Google Webmasters. I discovered that the client has about six hundred, 404 pages. Most of the error pages originated from their previous image gallery.

I already have a custom 404 page set-up, but is there something else I should be doing? Is it worth while to 301 redirect every single page within the .htaccess file, or will Google filter these pages out of its index naturally?

Thanks Mozers!

[DanDeceuster]

The Google webmaster blog answered this perfectly the other day, here is their post:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html

[calindaniel]

Daniel you rock! This is EXACTLY what I was looking for.

Thanks again.

[AaronSchinke]

Exactly what I was about to say. Cutts knows all.

[BradBorst]

I have the same problem.  I don't see any information in the Google link about setting up a proper 404 page.  Can someone advise how to do this or where to find info on this?

[calindaniel]

Are you using a content management system like wordpress or joomla? Or is it a straight HTML / CSS website?

[BradBorst]

HTML / CSS.  I just found a way to change this setting in my server host (GoDaddy), so it looks like that's all I have to do.  It doesn't appear that I would need to change anything in my htaccess file.

I take the following statement from Google as meaning we should only use the default 404 setting and not direct it to the homepage?  "Another example is when a site redirects any unknown URLs to their homepage instead of returning 404s. Both of these cases can have negative effects.............."   I guess I'm a little thrown off by the word "any urls."