Removing 404 Pages From Your Google Webmaster Tools Account
This question is being asked so often that I just decided to go ahead and write a post about that:
- You notice Google report a 404 page on your site;
- You go to your site and fix the error (delete the link to the non-existent page or just fix the broken URL);
- Your Google Webmaster Tools account is still reporting the error
- Is there any way to tell Google the error is fixed?
Currently, the only question to this question is “No”. Just make sure the issue is fixed and give it some time.
So just don’t waste your time trying to force Google to double-check: the error will be removed once Google revisits you site, re-crawls the link and updates the Webmaster Tools account information.
27 Responses to “Removing 404 Pages From Your Google Webmaster Tools Account”
Leave a Reply
Ann, agree with your post. I deal with large volumes of 404s and even after we fix them it takes time for GWT to update the stats, so not worth stressing over in the meantime.
And yeah talking about 404s does make me think about buying fake watches and handbags. Wait, no it doesn’t. But I’ll bet it makes you think about bringing back nofollow on comment links?
[Reply]
Ann Smarty Reply:
September 16th, 2009 at 8:33 am
The amount of spam here DOES make me want nofollow the comments
[Reply]
John S. Britsios (Webnauts) Reply:
September 17th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Ann, if I was you, if you do not have time to moderate every individual post, I would add nofollow to the comments.
I do not comment on blog posts for backlinks. And those spammers piss me off and make me hold my self back from commenting.
And by the way, your post is exactly what has to be done. Any other solutions are just pure BLA-BLA.
[Reply]
Ann Smarty Reply:
September 17th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Yeah, true. Trying to convince Loren to uninstall the dofollow plugin…
Rohit Reply:
September 18th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Ann Just tell me one thing, currently in GWT Google is showing 36 not found pages which dont exists but I dont know how Google found them
I have posted it in DP also but didnt get any good replies here is the link and please suggest me what can i do in this case, http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=12348127
[Reply]
cindy fortney Reply:
December 6th, 2009 at 8:16 am
I can explain it to you! We’ve had a problem for 3yrs…
cindy, mcfpd 9371
[Reply]
I second Jon, though I dont suggest the ways
I saw the short post had 4 comments and rushed, just to see 75% spam.
What is Akismet doing??
And reg. the post, would it not be better to employ 301 redirects if the url was broken or use customized 404 pages that show a link to relevant pages?
[Reply]
I am totally agree with your post Ann.
[Reply]
The url was broken or use customized 404 pages that show a link to relevant pages?thanks for this useful post.
[Reply]
fix the URL and give it a mainstream backlink…how u think?
[Reply]
John S. Britsios (aka Webnauts) Reply:
September 17th, 2009 at 8:02 am
What about doing a permanent 301 redirect to a close as relevant page of the site?
[Reply]
This is my first time @ this blog and I really enjoyed your articles, great work
[Reply]
I don’t check my site webmaster tool account last 2-3 months. I’ll check and remove 404 pages. Thanks for information.
[Reply]
I don’t know about this, i thought after removing the 404 page, the error is fixed completely but i don’t know that webmaster tool account still show problem up to next crawl of Google.Thanks
[Reply]
301 redirect the broken url to the correct url if need be. Also, it can take Google ages to actually update its data in Webmasters tools so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
[Reply]
Put up a blank page with noindex in meta tags, block it in htaccess, remove links pointing to it and then ping google 15 times. LOL
[Reply]
I had a 404 error problem on another site a few months back, just fixed the errors but it took about a month to clear from google, it pays to be careful when first setting up a site.
[Reply]
Ann, agree with your post. I deal with large volumes of 404s and even after we fix them it takes time for GWT to update the stats, so not worth stressing over in the meantime.
And yeah talking about 404s does make me think about buying fake watches and handbags. Wait, no it doesn’t. But I’ll bet it makes you think about bringing back nofollow on comment links
[Reply]
Thanks for the article I was trying to remove a non existent page from Google but all the time my URL removal request gets denied. I have created a robots.txt to remove the particular URL but I am still denied. Do you know why?
[Reply]
Ann Smarty Reply:
October 9th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Just give it some time I guess. Have you removed internal links to that page? Do you get Google referral traffic to that page?
[Reply]
Javs Reply:
October 9th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Actually that page doesn’t exist. No referral traffic for it as well as internal links. Now I have requested again and waiting for what Google says me.
[Reply]
I have removed some pages from the site. Google shows 404 error. Is it good for rankings?
[Reply]
John S. Britsios (aka Webnauts) Reply:
October 15th, 2009 at 2:17 am
You should redirect permanently those dead pages to on topic existing pages.
[Reply]
Vinish Reply:
December 8th, 2009 at 5:34 am
I have one question , GWT is showing me some of the tags which i have used as not found, since i changed/deleted few of the tags, how should i deal with such a problem ?
[Reply]
Ann: Apologies if I’m hijacking with this question, but I came here via a Google search.
Google Webmaster has begun to show 404 errors for URLs that consist of my Wordpress post URLs with mysteriously appended stuff like “&action=edit%2F/page/7/”. Also scores of URLs appended with social media site info from the Wordpress Sociable plugin.
The URLs are listed in Webmaster Central with 404/not found Crawl Errors. I have no idea how Google even discovered these URLs. Note: these are single page posts, if that matters any.
Any help would be miraculous.
[Reply]
I have noticed an interesting thing. Google sometimes reports 404 errors for pages, which I can happily view in my browser. Now I wonder who is a dumb one here
[Reply]
I would like to advice you all to have a look here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=1bc5206b5e0fac47&hl=en#all
[Reply]