Welcome to the Q&A Forum

First, I agree, the advanced segment list can get pretty messy. And there's no easy way to reorder or structure them. Still, we've managed to keep it slightly under control with some rules. Here's how we do it at Distilled: When creating an advanced segment there's a "more options" toward the end of the creation process. In here you can select whether that segment will be available to all profiles, or a select few. (see image) Now, we have do have some advanced segments that are available to all profiles. Those are the common ones that might be useful to any website. (Quick access segments like Google Organic, Macs, 2 or 3 word keywords, US visitors only, etc.) Otherwise, whenever we create one that is specific to the client's site, we select only their profile(s) in the more options list. You should end up with the top of your custom segment list as your "any profile" segments, and the ones at the bottom are client specific. You can do this retroactively by editing segments. It can be time consuming, but you'll only have to do it once - assuming you properly assign all new segments moving forward. Mike TViau.png

hi hannah, thx for the answer and the great insights. The problem is that for legal reason we need to show US visitors only the US version of the site. We can not give them the choice to choose other non-US versions

Hi Matteo. The first step I would suggest is determining the source of the links to these 404 pages. If these links are internal to your website, they should be removed or updated. The next step I would recommend is to ensure your site has a helpful 404 page. The page should offer your site's navigation along with a search function so users can locate relevant content on your site. I realize that thousands of broken links may seem overwhelming. It is a mess which should be cleaned up. How you proceed is dependent upon how much you value SEO. If your ranking is important and you want to be the best, you will have someone investigate every link and make the appropriate adjustments such as 301 redirecting them to the most appropriate page on your site, or allowing the link to continue to the 404 page. It's a search engine's job to help users find content. 404s are a natural part of the web. There is nothing inherently wrong with having some 404 pages. Having thousands of pages really shows your site has significant issues. Google's algorithms are not revealed publicly but it's logical to believe they may consider sites with a high percentage of 404 pages less trustworthy. This is my belief but not necessarily that of the SEO community.

To follow up on this. Look what I've found in the Google News Forum: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news/thread?tid=248ef4e6fe372e91&hl=en The problem is almost the same. Google News not indexing URLs with the trailing index.html. The only person who answered was a Top Contributor suggesting to contact directly Google News team.