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Deleted pages and lots of 404 errors

Discussion in 'Google Analytics' started by fadetoblack22, Dec 16, 2014.

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  1. #1
    I deleted 100s of pages of my site and webmaster tools keeps returning loads of 404 crawl errors. Of course, I deleted the pages, but I don't want them to exist anymore. How can I stop Google looking for them without having to remove each one from the index manually?
     
    fadetoblack22, Dec 16, 2014 IP
  2. tattoos

    tattoos Prominent Member

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    #2
    Providing you have removed all internal links to those pages and also removed references from your sitemap(s) Google should eventually give up trying to crawl them.
    How long ago did you delete the pages from your site? did the deleted pages have any/many links from other sites?

    Cheers
    James
     
    tattoos, Dec 16, 2014 IP
  3. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #3
    sarahk, Dec 16, 2014 IP
  4. fadetoblack22

    fadetoblack22 Well-Known Member

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    #4
    It's gone down to 113 pages, but it's been 6 months, so rather a long time. It wouldn't be an issue but I think lots of errors affect rankings.
     
    fadetoblack22, Dec 17, 2014 IP
  5. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #5
    Are you catching 404s properly?
     
    sarahk, Dec 17, 2014 IP
  6. fadetoblack22

    fadetoblack22 Well-Known Member

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    #6
    The deleted pages redirect to my 404 page. Is that what you meant?
     
    fadetoblack22, Dec 17, 2014 IP
  7. sarahk

    sarahk iTamer Staff

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    #7
    Yes, so Google will see the 404 and know that the site is well managed. It's to be expected that content will change over time.

    Back when I used to monitor what Google asked for - long before Analytics came along - you'd see Googlebot request pages with implausible names - they were checking for badly run sites or sites that had auto-content. People would spend time trying to find where Google was getting these urls from (bad links on their own or others sites) without thinking about the job the bots were doing.

    However, it is odd that you deleted so many pages in one go. Google will realise that and come to their own conclusions about you. I'm thinking you got rid of a ton of paid posts so that your site is "clean". What will Google think?
     
    sarahk, Dec 17, 2014 IP
  8. fadetoblack22

    fadetoblack22 Well-Known Member

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    #8
    Still, it's strange that there are still quite a lot in the index.

    They weren't paid posts. I changed my site theme and old way posts were formatted messed the posts up. It was easier to delete them than go back and change all the content.
     
    fadetoblack22, Dec 17, 2014 IP
  9. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #9
    Okay - so, if you wanted to keep the posts, what you should have done is to either create new posts (after deletion) with the same urls, or new posts with the same content (but new urls) and provide a 302 for the old ones. Not always feasible, I guess, but that would have been a better solution. Just make sure that the old urls are removed from your sitemap, and eventually Google will probably stop trying to index them.
     
    PoPSiCLe, Dec 17, 2014 IP
  10. fadetoblack22

    fadetoblack22 Well-Known Member

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    #10
    It was old time sensitive content anyway. I didn't mind getting rid of it. Just that now I keep getting all the errors in webmaster tools :(
     
    fadetoblack22, Dec 17, 2014 IP
  11. SEM Resource

    SEM Resource Greenhorn

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    #11
    You can set 301 redirects to new pages from these old pages. Or they will fall out of Google search in about 2 weeks or so.
     
    SEM Resource, Dec 18, 2014 IP
  12. fadetoblack22

    fadetoblack22 Well-Known Member

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    #12
    Do you think google minds if they are all redirected to the same page?
     
    fadetoblack22, Dec 18, 2014 IP
  13. ecotripsos

    ecotripsos Peon

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    #13
    I had the same issue when I restructured my blog, thus had to change around 200 URL's. The whole content was still there but only under different URL's, I just updated the sitemap and Google sorted out the rest in a couple weeks for me. Even the search results have been updated spotlessly.
     
    ecotripsos, Jan 2, 2015 IP