230 Broken Links (404) on my Domain!

1. 94

   Sue Adamsposted 8 years ago

   We are always warned to fix broken links on our pages, but according to Google Webmasters Messages I have no less than 230 broken links (404 - Page not Found) on my HP domain.
   
   
   
   Some broken links point to old hubs that I deleted years ago, but most of them are broken links to categories or other presumably deleted hubs.
   
   Is this fixable? Or nothing to worry about?

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   1. 89

      lobobrandonposted 8 years agoin reply to this

      Nothing to worry about as long as your current pages are crawlable. 404's don't harm a site/domain they just prevent pages from being indexed.

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      1. 94

         Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you Lobo, for putting me at ease.
         
         But then again, why does Google Webmaster ask us to fix these crawling errors? Don't so many broken links give a site a bad reputation in Google's view? The test shows zero 404's on my own website but 230 on my HP domain.
         
         Just wondering...

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         1. 89

            lobobrandonposted 8 years agoin reply to this

            You probably never deleted any old pages from your website? My website does show 43 404's. Pages that don't exist anymore. I can't seem to get rid of them from webmaster tools.

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            1. 94

               Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

               I have deleted loads of pages over time on my own website.  Maybe yours are still somewhere on your site's database. Have you checked your sitemap? As far as I remember, I logged in at my server, iPages, and removed the files from there.
               
               Perhaps other SEO experts more astute  that I can help you.

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               1. 89

                  lobobrandonposted 8 years agoin reply to this

                  Oh it's probably the sitemap then should get rid of the old one. I don't think I deleted it after I switched away from Wordpress

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   2. 85

      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      After seeing your post I went onto GMT to check my own, and sure enough, there are a few hundred of them.  When I read further it stated that this is nothing to worry about, but it would enhance the reader experience if I fixed them.  However, they showed no way of fixing them, and in fact stated that people probably would not be able to fix them!
      
      
      What interested me is that the dates these were found are very recent, yet many of mine are for very old articles that I either deleted or renamed.  When I deleted, in the great majority of cases, I had Google de index them...yet, here they are.
      
      This tells me that there is something wrong in Google's algorithm for this stuff.  If someone eliminates an article and requests that Google remove it, there should never be an issue like this.
      
      They need to get their act together.  You and I would fix this stuff if they gave us a way to do it, but they don't.  Guess they think we need something else to frustrate us!

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      1. 94

         Sue Adamsposted 8 years agoin reply to this

         They show the last  crawled dates, not the dates the page was deleted
         
         This is the Webmaster error message:
         
         "Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs that return a 404 (Page Not Found) error. Investigating these errors and fixing them where appropriate ensures that Google can successfully crawl your site's pages.
         
         Recommended action
         Check the Crawl Errors page in Webmaster Tools.
         Check that pages on your site don't link to non-existent pages."

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            TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

            Mine didn't say that, but even if it did, this does not tell you how to fix the errors.  Very strange!

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   Zander Collisionposted 8 years ago

   Google wants to send users to high quality content. If a webpage has broken links, it can clearly cause your ranking to suffer.
   
   How would you feel going to restaurant where there is no furniture, chefs missing and poor quality of food?

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   1. 85

      TIMETRAVELER2posted 8 years agoin reply to this

      This has nothing to do with broken links.  This has to do with Google not being able to find URLs of hubs that have been deleted.  Big difference.

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