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Designing a website without 404s

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Re: Designing a website without 404s

#61

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

mvkel wrote: post #50
lm411 wrote: post #46

I understand why the author thinks this is a good idea, but 404 exists for a reason. Literally "Not Found", not "I will guess at what you are looking for". The "implications for SEO" will almost certainly not be "positive" for quite a few reasons. As a general rule in my experience and learning, Google's black box algorithm doesn't like anything like this, and I expect you will be penalized for it. There are many goo…

This is absolutely right. The duplicate content flags alone will cancel everything out. I don't understand why people don't just read Google's own published guidelines ( https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-s... ) on how to properly SEO one's site. It's not some dark art. Google themselves tell you exactly how they index and why. All you have to do is read the guidelines.

The leaked documents are probably more useful than any "official" guide.

Re: Designing a website without 404s

#62

Post by politelemon »

lilouartz wrote: post #45

Hey everyone! Thank you for your feedback. Whether it is positive or negative, I do appreciate it as it helps me to learn and improve the product. I really didn't expect this to get any attention, let alone dozens of comments! To clarify: This was originally designed to help me auto migrate URL schema. I am learning as I develop this website, and SEO has been one of those vague topics where there are few hard rules.…

> If it is a new 404, I will display a 404 page which lists products with similar names

Best compromise is that. It is still a 404 but with a "Did you mean" element to it, which is still useful to end users

Re: Designing a website without 404s

#64

Post by blanca236 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #52
lm411 wrote: post #46

I understand why the author thinks this is a good idea, but 404 exists for a reason. Literally "Not Found", not "I will guess at what you are looking for". The "implications for SEO" will almost certainly not be "positive" for quite a few reasons. As a general rule in my experience and learning, Google's black box algorithm doesn't like anything like this, and I expect you will be penalized for it. There are many goo…

I hate websites that redirect URLs that should be 404s to something else like their homepage or whatever they think is relevant. My brain has to slam on the brakes and make sense of the absolute dissonance between what I expected and what I'm seeing, which is taxing. A 404 doesn't cause nearly as much dissonance, because the website is at least telling me why what I'm seeing is not what I expected.

[flagged]

Re: Designing a website without 404s

#65

Post by dazc »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #54
mvkel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely right. The duplicate content flags alone will cancel everything out. I don't understand why people don't just read Google's own published guidelines ( https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-s... ) on how to properly SEO one's site. It's not some dark art. Google themselves tell you exactly how they index and why. All you have to do is read the guidelines.

If the pages redirect and have a canonical irl, there should be no problem, right?

There is always a possibility of a problem, even if you do everything right. If you are redirecting multiple urls to one page, for example, you may believe you are helping visitors reach the most relevant/helpful result but it could also look like you are trying to artificially boost that one page?

Then there are the vagueries of a search engine becoming ever more dependent on ai where not everything makes rational sense and sites can get de-indexed at the drop of a hat.

Re: Designing a website without 404s

#66

Post by Levitating »

This doesn't prevent linkrot but it can definitely cause it. If the author ever so slightly changes his algorithm URLs that previously worked (but were incorrect) could stop working.

I don't see the problem that this is a solution for but I can see a couple of problems that this solution causes.

Re: Designing a website without 404s

#67

Post by graemep »

mvkel wrote: post #50
lm411 wrote: post #46

I understand why the author thinks this is a good idea, but 404 exists for a reason. Literally "Not Found", not "I will guess at what you are looking for". The "implications for SEO" will almost certainly not be "positive" for quite a few reasons. As a general rule in my experience and learning, Google's black box algorithm doesn't like anything like this, and I expect you will be penalized for it. There are many goo…

This is absolutely right. The duplicate content flags alone will cancel everything out. I don't understand why people don't just read Google's own published guidelines ( https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-s... ) on how to properly SEO one's site. It's not some dark art. Google themselves tell you exactly how they index and why. All you have to do is read the guidelines.

If you look at the recently leaked documents Google often do not tell the truth, or the whole truth.

301s are what you are supposed to do with things like changed URLs, so I cannot see it being a problem in this case. A 301 is nor duplicate content - it is one of the things Google likes you do do to avoid duplicate content.

It would probably be good to add a threshold to the similarity to prevent urls redirecting to something very different.

Re: Designing a website without 404s

#68

Post by photonthug »

Levitating wrote: post #66

This doesn't prevent linkrot but it can definitely cause it. If the author ever so slightly changes his algorithm URLs that previously worked (but were incorrect) could stop working. I don't see the problem that this is a solution for but I can see a couple of problems that this solution causes.

Yeah. This is the same mentality that causes search engines, AI and many foolish and frustrating humans to avoid at all costs saying the words “I don’t know”
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