Soft 404′s in Google Webmaster Tools

If the Google Mayday change has done one thing for me, it’s gotten my head deeper into actual Webmaster duties, than I have been in a long time! I guess I got lazy… or complacent… who knows. Yesterday, I started fixing bounce rates, and today… while using Google Webmaster Tools to look for more issues, I found a ton of soft 404 issues for pages like 1970/page1/feed/ etc.

Not sure if you saw the news last week – but Google is now reporting soft 404 issues in the Webmaster Tools interface.

I’m not going to debate whether it’s right of Google to try and dictate changes of W3C standards or not… and will leave that to people more knowledgeable than me, but I have seen websites with literally ZERO 404 issues for the last 2 years, suddenly start showing hundreds of them, overnight!

In addition to the new reporting of soft 404′s, I am finding no-followed links actually showing in search results pages!

Are You Seeing a Bunch of 404′s in GWT?

Put on your triple-layer tin foil hat… fire up your WMT account and see what Google knows about your sites!

Scary!

Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:

• Soft 404 in BANS Revisited
• Get Rid of those Soft 404′s in BANS
• Google Mayday Update and SERP Changes

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