Curated technical guides from trusted SEO blogs. Diagnose issues, prioritize fixes, and improve crawlability, speed and indexability with practical checklists and examples.
Breaking news: Cloudflare is experiencing another major service disruption, causing widespread 5xx errors and connectivity issues for websites and services globally. The post Cloudflare Outage Returns, Triggering Fresh Wave Of…
A Cloudflare outage is causing 5xx errors for many sites. Here’s how Google handles short server spikes and what to watch in SEO reports. The post Cloudflare Outage Triggers 5xx…
Fix ChatGPT 404 referrals fast. Learn how to find phantom URLs in GA4, prioritize with Semrush, and recover lost traffic.
Google clarifies that soft 404 pages consume crawl budget, even when they return a 200 OK status. Here’s how this affects your site. The post Google: Soft 404s Use Crawl…
Learn what HTTP status codes are, what different codes mean, and how they impact search visibility.
Google’s Search Relations team shares which HTTP status codes matter most for SEO. Learn how redirects, 1xx codes, and network errors impact your site’s performance. The post HTTP Status Codes…
Google advises against redirecting all 404 pages to the homepage, recommending proper redirects or maintaining 404 status codes. The post Google’s Martin Splitt Warns Against Redirecting 404s To Homepage appeared…
Google’s John Mueller explains how Search Console handles 404s, redirects, and site migration issues during reprocessing. The post Google Clarifies 404 & Redirect Validation In Search Console appeared first on…
Google’s John Mueller cautioned against simply redirecting URLs in order to “fix” 404 errors, explaining how best to handle them The post Google Cautions On Improper 404 Handling appeared first…
Gary Illyes from Google explained two reasons why soft 404 errors are bad. Soft 404s are when a page returns a 200 status okay, but Google thinks that page should…
Google’s Gary Illyes warns of soft 404 errors’ impact on web crawling and recommends proper error handling to improve SEO and site efficiency. The post Google Warns Of Soft 404…
Google has always said that having pages that serve a 404 status code is normal; most sites have them, and when a page does not exist on your site, and…
Google Business Profiles websites, which stopped loading websites and began redirecting to the Google Business Profiles listing on Google Maps now completely 404 – as expected. It was supposed to…
A couple of weeks ago Forbes blocked its coupons directory on its website from being crawled by Google. Now Forbes has completely wiped out all the coupons from its site,…
Learn 3 methods to create custom 404 pages in WordPress and discover why you should customize yours.
I am not sure how many times Google has said that you do not need to disavow spammy links, that you can ignore link spam attacks and that links pointing…
Google’s Gary Illyes responded to a question about 404 errors that coincided with a drop in search rankings The post Google On 404 Errors And Ranking Drops appeared first on…
Google says brief 503 downtimes are acceptable, but extended unavailability can impact crawling. The post Google On The SEO Impact Of 503 Status Codes appeared first on Search Engine Journal.
The SEO topic of using a 404 versus a 410 error status code for pages not found is one of those topics that has been around for the past two…
Google’s John Mueller advises website owners on penalties, proper content practices, and HTTP status codes. The post Google’s John Mueller Clarifies 404 & 410 Confusion For SEO appeared first on…
The post 401 vs 403 Status Codes and Their SEO Consequences appeared first on SE Ranking Blog.
Improve user experience with best 404 pages examples. Check out this exhaustive list for top notch examples that can work for your brand. The post The Best 404 Pages: 40…
Improve user experience with best 404 pages examples. Check out this exhaustive list for top notch examples that can work for your brand. The post The Best 404 Pages: 40…
John Mueller answers questions about fixing 404 errors and validating fixes for 404s when they still exist The post Google On 404 Errors And Search Console Validation Fix appeared first…
This week, I reported about a weird ranking pattern that has been emerging with these weekend ranking Google updates. Google Search Console shows a spike in 404 errors for URLs…
Error 404 Page Not Found: Bad for visitors and bad for business. Use this guide to combat this common error.
I am seeing an unusual number of complaints around the reported 404 errors within Google Search Console reporting. This is specific to your URLs having /1000 appended to the end…
The post The Essential SEO Guide to HTTP Status Codes appeared first on SE Ranking Blog.
Google’s John Mueller explains the nuance of fixing (or not fixing) 404 errors caused by broken inbound links The post Google Discusses Fixing 404 Errors From Inbound Links appeared first…
Google’s John Mueller answered a question about finding broken links that 404 and if there is SEO value in working on bringing those links back to life. John ended his…
Google’s John Mueller answers what to do about 404 errors reported in Search Console The post Google On What To Do About 404 Errors In Search Console appeared first on…
Gary Illyes from Google posted how serving a 304 HTTP server status code can “backfire spectacularly,” even though the 304 can be a super useful signal for search engines.
Google’s Gary Illyes offered advice about choosing between the 301 and 404 status codes The post What’s Less Harmful: 301 Redirect or “404 Error Pages”? appeared first on Search Engine…
Visitors usually see a 404 page after clicking on a non-existing URL. It informs users that the page they have been searching for is missing. It may seem plain and…
Learn why cloaking HTTP status codes is risky, Google’s stance on it, and the importance of ethical SEO practices. The post Google Warns Against Cloaking HTTP Status Codes appeared first…
Get the full list of HTTP status codes and a simple, jargon-free explanation of what each one means.
Google responds to increase in erroneous use of 403/404 responses from publishers and Content Delivery Networks as a way to rate limit Googlebot The post Google: Don’t Use 403/404 Error…
Gary Illyes posted a new blog post on the Google Search Central site asking all of you to stop using 403 and 404 server status codes to reduce the crawl…
One of the most important things you can assess on your website is what hypertext transfer protocol status codes (or HTTP Status Codes) exist there. These codes can be very…
Here is another PSA from Gary Illyes of Google. In short, if you serve a 4xx status code with your robots.txt file, then Google will ignore the rules you have…
Gary Illyes from Google said on LinkedIn that if your server returns a 500/503 HTTP status code for an extended period of time for your robots.txt file, then Google may…
On Friday, Lizzi Sassman from Google updated the crawl budget management help document with two more topics. Specifically, Google added two new myths to the crawl budget documentation.
This post covers Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) requests and responses, common reasons for 404 errors, and how to fix them on your website.
Know the difference between error 404s and soft 404s and learn how to fix the SEO issues behind them. The post 404 vs. Soft 404 Errors: What’s The Difference &…
When navigating a website, there are few things more frustrating than landing on a 404 error message: “Page Not Found.” Here’s how to fix it. The post How To Create…
There is an interesting response from John Mueller of Google on what to do with URLs that may appear duplicated because of URL parameters, like UTMs, at the end of…
Google’s Gary Illyes said on the latest Search Off The Record podcast that soft 404s, pages Google thinks are 404s but return a 200 server status code, do waste crawl…
Google has deleted and 404ed the Rich media file best practices. Google said removed its “documentation about rich-media files, such as Silverlight and Flash.” Why? This is the best part,…
Google has made changes to a few of its Google search help documentation over the past couple of days. The documents updated include HTTP status codes, the Googlebot and job…
We know that sometimes Google can be triggered to treat your pages as a soft 404, essentially Google thinks that page should be 404ed and thus removed from the search…
We know that links pointing to pages that do not exist, that 404 or some soft 404, are links that are not counted by Google – that is not new….
The status codes are how your client and a server communicate with each other. You can view any page’s HTTP status codes for free using Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar by clicking…
Google’s John Mueller posted one of those PSA tweets this morning asking hosting companies that trigger robot detection interstitials to not use a 200 status code. John also said not…
Several months ago Google told us that returning a “results not found” type of page can result in Google Search considering that page a soft 404 and thus removing it…
If you have a lot of links to your site, but some of those links are pointing to pages that no longer exist and serve a 404 not found status…
Do you think 404 and soft 404s errors can affect your Google search rankings? Find out if they are ranking factors here. The post Are 404 & Soft 404 Errors…