Google’s John Mueller addressed whether numerous 404 errors negatively impact rankings and provided a clear explanation of the best practices for handling them.
404 (Not Found) Status Code
404 is the code that a server sends when a browser or a crawler requests a web page that the server couldn’t find. It only means that the page was not found.
The official W3C documentation doesn’t use the word “error” in its definition of 404. That said, the 400 series of codes (400, 404, 410, etc.) are classified as Client Error Responses. A client is a browser or a crawler, so a client error response means that the server is telling the browser or crawler that their request is in error. It doesn’t mean that the website is in error.
This is the official W3C definition of a 404 Page Not Found response:
“The 404 (Not Found) status code indicates that the origin server did not find a current representation for the target resource or is not willing to disclose that one exists. A 404 status code does not indicate whether this lack of representation is temporary or permanent; the 410 (Gone) status code is preferred over 404 if the origin server knows, presumably through some configurable means, that the condition is likely to be permanent.”
Will 404 Errors Affect Rankings?
The person asking the question wanted to know if a lot of 404 responses will affect rankings. Google’s John Mueller answered the question then he explained the right way to “fix” 404 error responses and cautioned about when not to “fix” them. I put “fix” in quotation marks because 404 responses are not always something that needs fixing.
Here’s the question:
“My website has a lot of 404s. Would I lose my site’s rankings if I don’t redirect them?”
John Mueller answered:
“First off, the 404s wouldn’t affect the rest of your site’s rankings.”
Addressing 404s With Redirects
Mueller next discussed the use of redirects for stopping 404 responses from happening. A redirect is a server response that tells the client that the web page they are requesting has been moved to another URL. A 301 redirect tells the browser or crawler that the URL has permanently moved to another URL.
When To Use Redirects For 404s
Redirecting a web page that no longer exists to another web page is sometimes the right way to handle 404 page not found responses.
This is how Mueller explains the proper use of redirects for “fixing” 404 responses:
“Redirects can play a role in dealing with old pages, but not always. For example, if you have a genuine replacement product, such as a new cup that functionally replaces a cup which is no longer produced, then redirecting is fine.”