Google Penalty on 404 Errors?

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Google Penalty on 404 Errors?,

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undoIT View Member Profile Find Member's Posts	Sep 25 2008, 10:05 PM Post #1
W.R. Private Group: Members Posts: 31 Joined: 7-July 07 Member No.: 504	I have a site with many pages that are regularly updated. Often a page needs to be replaced with entirely new content because the old content expired. In this case, the title, content and URL all need to change. Because there are so many new pages being added, the 301 redirects would really pile-up. I have an XML sitemap that is updated every time new content is added or replaced. There aren't any internal links with 404 errors and it doesn't make sense to leave expired content live, but I also don't want to cause a penalty by removing pages that are no longer valid. Would having regular 404 errors from expired pages that have been removed cause a penalty with Google for the pagerank on the site? -------------------- Lenovo Coupons \| HP Coupons - Shopping website for the "wiser miser" Themebot - Free HTML Templates and Free Website Templates

sypher View Member Profile Find Member's Posts	Sep 25 2008, 10:21 PM Post #2
the owner3r Group: Administrators Posts: 1,531 Joined: 4-April 06 From: North Wales, UK Member No.: 4	No -------------------- sypher design - North Wales Web Design \| Latest Work: - Celtic DEA CSS - Cant See Sh*t

undoIT View Member Profile Find Member's Posts	Sep 25 2008, 10:41 PM Post #3
W.R. Private Group: Members Posts: 31 Joined: 7-July 07 Member No.: 504	QUOTE (sypher @ Sep 25 2008, 08:21 PM) No That simple? I like the new avatar btw

sypher View Member Profile Find Member's Posts	Sep 25 2008, 11:01 PM Post #4
the owner3r Group: Administrators Posts: 1,531 Joined: 4-April 06 From: North Wales, UK Member No.: 4	Hehe thanks Google does everything in its power to try and not penalize websites even when they do black hat seo stuff. So they would never penalize sites for something so small. -------------------- sypher design - North Wales Web Design \| Latest Work: - Celtic DEA CSS - Cant See Sh*t

undoIT View Member Profile Find Member's Posts	Sep 25 2008, 11:47 PM Post #5
W.R. Private Group: Members Posts: 31 Joined: 7-July 07 Member No.: 504	I did quite a bit of searching on Google for this but nothing seemed to specifically answer the question. It seems that there can be a penalty for excessive 404 errors, but probably if they are happening with internal links, which would indicate a low quality site. I don't see why there would be a penalty in my situation, especially if I have a good sitemap that is updated daily. Just wanted to make sure This post has been edited by undoIT: Sep 25 2008, 11:47 PM

voodish View Member Profile Find Member's Posts	Oct 12 2008, 05:40 AM Post #6
W.R. Private Group: Members Posts: 24 Joined: 12-October 08 Member No.: 1,253	Personally, I would initially use a 301 redirect as you suggest, until Google learns about the new location of the file. I would also update all links to the new destination so that there are no links (within your control) actively seeking the old URL, and therefore not relying on the .htaccess file. If it was a very popular page, I may go as far as to inform linking sites of the new destination, but only in the extremes. I would leave for say 3 months and then remove the 301's, if you feel they are causing unnecessary strain on your server. Much better than Google regularly hitting a wall of 404's imo. This post has been edited by voodish: Oct 12 2008, 05:41 AM -------------------- Web Design North Wales

undoIT View Member Profile Find Member's Posts	Oct 12 2008, 10:10 AM Post #7
W.R. Private Group: Members Posts: 31 Joined: 7-July 07 Member No.: 504	I decided to keep the old pages active. Too many pages would have to be 301 redirected.

stevenayres View Member Profile Find Member's Posts	Oct 18 2008, 05:51 PM Post #8
W.R. Private Group: Members Posts: 8 Joined: 21-September 08 Member No.: 1,181	Google can be a pain when it comes to this. We have some pages that we removed and they have shown up on our webmaster tools as missing links for like a month St Paul Windows This post has been edited by stevenayres: Oct 18 2008, 05:52 PM

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