We've recently migrated an old custom cms site to Umbraco at the same domain.   Google Webmaster Tool is reporting 1000s of "Not Found" errors from the old 404 page in the format error/404?aspxerrorpath=/path/to/old/url.  Does this mean that Google has historically indexed all these pages (ie before switching to Umbraco)? Searching for these urls produces no results.  Do we need to take any action (such as 410'ing pages which match this pattern) or will the new site returning a 404 be enough?
120492
Does it make sense to return a 410 instead of 404 when some page has been permanently removed? In , Matt Cutts says that Google treats them the same, but are there other reasons to implement a 410 (except for technical correctness)?
41769
In Google Search Console/Webmaster Tools, I found 404 error URLs with this pattern: http://example.com/page-name/example.com  This is happening to all pages, posts, and even category type.  For example:   Here is the .htaccess file:    Does anyone know what might be causing this?
12429
I have used so many things like url removal request and deleted the pages etc., but still the errors are shown in my webmaster tools.  How can I remove the urls completely from Google?
118457
I have a substantial number of rewrite rules in place for a variety of reasons such as:  disallow indexes, set custom error pages, force non-www, https, strip trailing slash, redirect index.html or.php to root, pretty URLs (hides file extensions &amp; queries), 404 any URL with Additional Path Info   I was having trouble with nonsense URLs (URLs with Additional Path Info) invoking broken pages &amp; 500 errors that were being indexed as duplicates by search engines.  Sample: example.com/index.php/somefolder/another/file/query...   I set up rules to redirect to a default page rather than rendering broken pages or 500 errors. I then modified that same block to send such nonsense URLs to 404 instead so they would not be indexed.  MrWhite educated me on the proper use of AcceptPathInfo Off but unfortunately this had no effect.  The current solution (full array shown below) requires additional .htaccess files inside any sub-directories containing accessible pages but it worked like a charm.   This is the full array of rules currently in place. Everything is now working perfectly. I'm currently working to eliminate the need for the additional htaccess files in the subdirectories.  AcceptPathInfo Off     Options -Indexes  Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteBase /  ## 404 ANY URL WITH ADDITIONAL PATH INFO ## RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /([^.]+)\.php/? [NC]  RewriteRule ^ /%1 [NC,R=404,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/?$ /$1.php [L,NC]  ## SET CUSTOM ERROR PAGES ## ErrorDocument 400 /error/error_400.php ErrorDocument 401 /error/error_401.php ErrorDocument 403 /error/error_403.php ErrorDocument 404 /error/error_404.php ErrorDocument 500 /error/error_500.php  ## FORCE HTTPS &amp; NON-WWW ## ## RewriteEngine On  RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://dev.example.com/$1 [R=301,L,NE]  ## STRIP TRAILING SLASH ## RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^(.*)/$ /$1 [R=301,L]  ## REDIRECT INDEX TO ROOT ## RewriteRule ^index\.php$ / [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^index\.htm$ / [R=301,L]  ## PRETTY URLS FOR DYNAMIC FILES ## RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^items/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)$ item.php?item=$1 [L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^items/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/$ item.php?item=$1 [L]  ## PRETTY URL FOR ANY STATIC FILE ## RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)$ $1.php [L,QSA]   The block labeled "404 ANY URL WITH ADDITIONAL PATH INFO" would be unnecessary if the "AdditionalPathInfo off" directive would work. This setting can also be controlled in the httpd-conf file on the server. Editing httpd-conf requires command-line, ssh access and can be dangerous. Consult your hosting company or server admin if that sounds scary.   Currently using feedback I've received here to clean this up. Updates to come.
106306
I have changed some URLs in my site then to prevent webmaster tools duplicate error I redirected (301) old URLs to new URLs also I tried to remove old URLs in "Optimization>Remove URLs" section of webmaster tools and still I get Duplicate title error.  I want to know is any problem in redirecting?  For example   redirected to   PS, I used Fiddler to check 301 redirect and think it should be okay.  Thanks in advance
2475
I know this question is someway similar to  where they recommend using 404, but after reading  where they suggest to use 301 when changing site URLs (in the specific case was due to redesign/re factoring) I get a bit of confused and I hope someone could clarify for this specific example:   Let's say I have an eCommerce site, let's also say the final user inserted some interesting items in the site and the eCommerce webapp created the item pages at the URLs: http://...?id=20, http://...?id=30 etc. Now let's say some of these interesting items got many external links toward them from many other sites because some people found those items very interesting and linked to them. After some years the final user deletes those items, so obviously the pages and URLs http://...?id=20, http://...?id=30, etc. now do not exist anymore, but still many pages on the web are linking toward them.   What should the eCommerce site do now, just show a 404 page for those items?  But, I'm confused, wouldn't this lose all the Google PR passed by the external links to the items pages? So isn't it better to use 301 redirect to HOME PAGE that at least passes the PR to the HOME PAGE?    EDIT:  Well, according to answers the best thing to do so far is to do a 404/410.  In order to make this question more complete, I would like to talk about a special case, just to make sure I understood. properly.  Let's say the user creates those items again (the ones he previously deleted at point 4), maybe he changes a bit their names and description, but they are basically the same items. The webapp has no way to know these new added items were the old items so it obviously create them as new items with new URLs http://...?id=100, http://...?id=101, does it makes sense at this point to redirect 301 the old urls to the new ones?    ANOTHER EDIT (It would be VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND):  Well according to the clever answers received so far it seems for the special case, explained in my last EDIT, I could use 301, since it's something of not deceptive cause basically the new pages is a replacement for the old page in term of contents. This is basically done to keep the PR passed from external link and also for better user experience.  But beside the user experience, that is debatable (*1), in order to preserve PR from external broken links why not just always use 301, In my understanding Google dislikes duplicated contents, but are we sure that 301 redirect to HOME PAGE is seen as duplicated contents for Google?!   Google itself  so if they consider 301 as duplicated contents wouldn't that be considered duplicated contents too? Why do they suggest it?  Let me provoke you: “why not just add a 301 to HOME PAGE for every not found page?”   (*1) as a user, when I follow a broken URL from some external link to some website's page I would stick more on this website if I get redirected to HOME PAGE rather than seeing a 404 page where I would think the website does not even exist anymore and maybe I don't even try to go to HOME PAGE of the website.
109807
There is a few years old small website with very few pages (~5), which were indexed and ranked by Google. A few days ago 4 of those pages disappeared from SERPs and Search Console gives me 404 Not Found errors despite the fact that the pages are up and running. I didn't do any changes in header's crawler related meta tags and robot.txt neither.  Tried to submit a sitemap.xml but  for that too.  What causes this problem?
105712
I have a site where Google has already indexed about 1 million pages, and I want to change all the URL paths for SEO purposes, ensuring that we always have our keywords in the path.  Technically I know how to complete it (301 redirects, new canonical URL, update sitemap, etc.) but I'm wondering if Google will penalize the site because of it, or if links will disappear from search results until they are re-crawled?
642
There has been a significant drop (90%) in traffic from Google to one of my well-established sites (6+ years) in the last week. Searches show that the top 3 wide keywords all dropped 4 spots. Searches for other keywords do not show ANY results in the first 10 to 25 pages of results, while previously one 1st or 2nd page at most.  Since there are , the question really is:  What steps are necessary to figure out what caused such a drop?  There have been no major changes during this period or the last month on the site and certainly not in the homepage which has dropped in rank. Over all the years of running this site and plenty of others, I have never experienced this. There are is duplicate content on my site and I have rigorously used canonical links for the last few years to ensure it is not misinterpreted as such.
12186
We run an ecommerce site that was setup by a third party ecommerce software provider, basic shop with product pages, basket and checkout.  The third party vendor set up the htaccess file so that if a non-existent URL is enetered it redirects to the homepage instead of a 404 error being generated.  This results in google webmaster reporting duplicate titles and descriptions for pages that no longer exist.  I think that it would be better for a dedicated 404 error page to be displayed rather than redirecting back to the homepage  So is it better to have a website redirect a 404 to the homepage than have a dedicated 404 page instead?
38232
This is in connection to drupal.org issue .  That's when I happen to request for page "node/1/aaa/bbbb", I'm served the response for "node/1" (it's parent page).  I can understand, this is the way Drupal menu system has been designed and works for some obvious reasons.   But I'm in a need to change this. Reason we have some aliased urls across the site, links from third party sites are taking (visitors and crawlers) to not existing page for which ideally http 404 response code and page not found to be returned. Instead Drupal showing it's parent page (with http res. code 200). This is leading to duplicate page in Google webmasters and misleading our genuine users.  I have found a  to this issue. However it is working fine only for 80% of cases, some valid urls (admin/*, sites/default/files/ * , system/ajax/*, etc.,) leads to 404 page.  Would like to hear how others are dealing with this duplicate content issue concerning SEO and possible fix!
6697
I recently submitted a sitemap.xml in Google's Webmaster Tools and some of the pages already got indexed. The problem now is, that I cleaned my URLs with MOD_REWRITE in the .htaccess file afterwards and I would like the new ones to be indexed. The old ones should be removed from the Google Index.  Indexed Page:  www.example.com/article.php?=article=this%is%an%example   New URL:  www.example.com/article-this-is-an-example   Do I even have to remove them manually from the index in any way or do they refresh if Google crawls my new sitemap? I really wan't to prevent duplicate content.  Thanks in advance.
110134
I have a wordpress site that has had a large number of blog posts removed. How can i ask google to remove all these 404 page not founds, but leave the active blog posts. I see the removal tool in google webmasters but it doesnt say if it will just remove the 404s. I understand 404s naturally are removed from the index, but i want to expedite this.
22398
I recently switched my domain from  to , and added my new domain to my Webmaster Tools account. After a few days, I went there and checked the data, and I was a bit worried when I saw this:    How can I interpret this? Is Google really not indexing my site at all? I'm afraid that's the case, because when I google for it, only my old blogspot domain shows up!
28256
I had an old domain that I have deprecated, but 301 redirected all results from it to my new site.  The new site is now receiving a decent amount of traffic, but I don't know if it's 301 redirected from the old site, and doing a site:[old site] still shows several thousand pages indexed.  Since all pages from the old site are 301 redirected, will they ever be removed from the index, as long as the old domain name is active?  As a rule of thumb, somewhere I got 90 days for any significant site changes.  When is it safe to burn the old domain?
110945
I moved a drupal installation from one server to another. Steps I followed:   Copied whole directory structure from old server. Exported database from old server. added files to newdomain/drupal Imported database edited settings.php with new database information.   As of right now the home page is working (Except for some broken non-db images, but I know the reason for that and can fix it) But none of the links to any of the nodes or any of the admin paths I know seem to exist. I get a 404 File Not Found error.   I wonder if it's related to the fact that this installation is in a subdirectory and the other one was not, but is that enough to make every page except the homepage not function?
106935
In a technical SEO audit I used both Google Search Console and ScreamingFrog crawl to review the status errors, however there is big discrepancy in the number of pages that Google knows about, and the ones that ScreamingFrog finds (without any limitations or change in settings of the Spider).   I have 350 overall pages in ScreamingFrog and 7.2K pages in GSC. Same for the different status errors, and there is mismatch on which tool finds what. For example, GSC finds 16 404s but they are totally different pages from the 404s ScreamigFrog finds (just one overlapped).   Did you experience the same?