How to return a 404 (Not found) response

  • lauratraveler

    (@lauratraveler)


    9 years ago

    Hi,
    In Google Search Control > Crawl Errors I get
    1 server error
    4 soft 404
    32 not found
    How do I sort these out? I need to mention that none of these URLs are linked from the sitemap, nor from other pages of the website, in spite of Google insisting that they are.
    Many thanks!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • superusersysadmin

    (@superusersysadmin)

    Hello.

    Have you tried stopping Google from crawling certain URLs using Robots.txt file?

    Here is some info on Robots.txt

    Let us know if you need further assistance with this.

    Thank you.

    Thread Starter lauratraveler

    (@lauratraveler)

    Hi, thanks for the robots.txt tip. ??

    Thread Starter lauratraveler

    (@lauratraveler)

    Question. Do I have to leave all these URLs disallowed forever and ever? Or will Google figure out they don’t exist anymore after a while and I can remove them from the robots.txt?

    superusersysadmin

    (@superusersysadmin)

    Hello again.

    Hi, thanks for the robots.txt tip. ??

    Sure no problem.

    Question. Do I have to leave all these URLs disallowed forever and ever? Or will Google figure out they don’t exist anymore after a while and I can remove them from the robots.txt?

    Well if the URLs do not exist anymore then leaving them disallowed in your Robots.txt file forever will not have any negative effects.

    So why not just leave them in there? But, yes Google will eventually forget about these URLs.

    Obviously, if the URLs become active again and you want them to be crawled, remove them from the Robots.txt file.

    Thank you.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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