Sites linking to non existant pages in my site

[Topboss]

I received a notification from Google saying that there has been an increase in Not found errors on my site.
When I had a look I found that there is some arbitrary chinese sites linking to non existant pages in my site.

Eg - Lets say my real page is xxxhttp://www.topboss.com/slots.htm
Under broken links there will be things like xxxhttp://www.topboss.com/slots/123 which are pages that have never existed in my site.

What is the best way to deal with these errors. In the past I have just told google to remove the url from its search results, but I don't think this is the best way to deal with it because the site will still be linking to the non existant page.

I know the best way is to ask the webmaster to remove the link but the sites in question are all in chinese and don't even have a contact us page so this is not an option.

Does anyone have any advice?

[DaftDog]

I'm not an expert in this area but you need to differentiate between 404 errors and actual links to your site. Hackers will sometimes search your sites for vulnerable themes or plug-ins and this will result in an increase in Not Found errors in your Webmaster Tools account. It does not mean that these are actual live links. However, if Google sent you an actual notification warning you of this problem then it could be something else.

[-Shay-]

Rick was talking about this a few months back in this forum. If I recall correctly, he was wanting to compile data for people who were seeing this happen to their own sites.

If I find the discussion thread, I'll post a link.

[Nibor]

I think this might what you were referring to Shay https://www.gpwa.org/forum/bad-links...ght=404+errors

To be honest there isn't much you can do about it I don't think. Any website will have the same problem with spam sites that point poorly coded links to pages on your site that don't exist, causing all those soft 404 errors to appear. Why these links are generated could be for any number of reasons - probably intentionally to harm ones site unfortunately. They are of course very annoying.

[baldidiot]

I was thinking about this the other day actually as someone else was talking about having thousands of them of their site and they were worried it was going to hurt them.

Question for the techies - is is possible to automatically redirect all 404 pages to a subdomain that's noidexed? Eg: 404.yoursite.com rather than yoursite.com/404.

Idea is to just get them off your main www.domain and deal with them elsewhere to try and reduce the risk of any negative implications. No idea if it'd work, just thinking out loud really...

[justbookies]

I was thinking about this the other day actually as someone else was talking about having thousands of them of their site and they were worried it was going to hurt them.

Question for the techies - is is possible to automatically redirect all 404 pages to a subdomain that's noidexed? Eg: 404.yoursite.com rather than yoursite.com/404.

Idea is to just get them off your main www.domain and deal with them elsewhere to try and reduce the risk of any negative implications. No idea if it'd work, just thinking out loud really...

That sounds like a good bit of thinking. Surely redirecting via a .htaccess file to the subdomain would do it. But would actually having that subdomain with all those trash links redirecting to it (even if noindexed etc) damage your main site re: seo? I guess better that than to your main site.

[-Shay-]

I'd just disavow them if they were concerning me in addition to having an informative 404 page.

[universal4]

Yes Heather this is the issue I was talking about previously.

This mostly happens because of the scrapers used or the database query on the site when publishing the link will truncate the url and shorten it to something that is a 404. (Even a full link that truncates the l off the html will suddenly become a 404)

The cases that this is intentional are often a little more difficult to deal with since this often means the total numbr of 404's is greater, but depending on pages targeted wildcards in the htaccess can come in handy.

Yes there are ways to use htaccess with wildcards and use rewrite rules to take care of this. You must use caution when using wildcards, if you use the wrong syntax you can redirect some of your own pages to others.

Lets say casino1review.html is targeted, and they add characters to the end, or shorten the url. You could use a wildcard says casin1wildcard and redirect to /casino1review.html.

Recently one site that got nailed with this, they all seemed to be image links and in a few cases only the extension was missing in the link but that made them 404's.

Heather I am happy to help you directly with this, just let me know. I think I sent Jan some examples at one point but I can do so again if needed.

Rick
Universal4

Added: Personally I would prefer to just start blocking all these damn seo bots and scrapers at the loadmaster/nat level, but that would block them from ALL web servers. Blocking them by htaccess works but that means the entries need added to every single htaccess in each site. I also question whether it might hurt a little, and seo sites could no longer run seo reports and link reports on all sites behind those nat devices.

[Topboss]

Thanks Rick...and to everyone else who responded. I really appreciate it.
Jan managed to sort it out in the end by adding a 404 error page.
Seemed to be the simplest solution in the end

[universal4]

Well, a 404 page will STILL be 404's in google's eyes and will likely end up in the not found list in webmaster tools. The 404 is a response code the server gives when it can not find a page, google's bot will still see this reponse even if the server redirects to the 404 page.

The 404 page is really only designed to salvage a real visitor, and give them an opportunity to get back into the site.

Rick
Universal4

[mickyfu]

You could always just redirect all 404's to your homepage, or setup a blogger blog, and redirect all the 404's to that. I would take a guess that someone is intentionally trying to harm your site by running a nseo campaign on it.

[-Shay-]

You could always just redirect all 404's to your homepage, or setup a blogger blog, and redirect all the 404's to that. I would take a guess that someone is intentionally trying to harm your site by running a nseo campaign on it.

If someone is trying to harm a site with negative SEO, then it is careless to advise redirection to the homepage.

[mickyfu]

If someone is trying to harm a site with negative SEO, then it is careless to advise redirection to the homepage.

Not really, they are hitting non existent pages to make the nseo attack more effective. By redirecting to the homepage, it will take some of the impact out.

[Nibor]

Not really, they are hitting non existent pages to make the nseo attack more effective. By redirecting to the homepage, it will take some of the impact out.

I'm going to have to disagree with that, unless I have misunderstood what you mean. However, by redirecting these 404's to the homepage, you still have negative links pointing to your site, but now they'll be pointing to a real page. I would say you're not really solving anything. You would just be solving one problem, and creating yourself a different problem.


Edit: I just realised that maybe you mean that the sites where the links are coming from aren't necessarily negative, only the creation of the 404's is negative. Therefore, by redirecting those 404's to the homepage you would be fixing the issue. However, in this example I believe the sites in question where the links are coming from are spam sites, in which case I would still agree with what I already said.

[-Shay-]

Not really, they are hitting non existent pages to make the nseo attack more effective. By redirecting to the homepage, it will take some of the impact out.

So, you're saying that if someone has some "Cheap designer purse" links pointing to pages on their gambling site that do not exist via a "negative seo" campaign from a Chinese website, then the best practice advice is to redirect to the homepage and that doing so will take "some of the impact" out?

[mickyfu]

Neg seo is not all about pointing **** links at a site, a lot of people, who know what they are doing, create masses of 404 errors to make your site look crap. There are two things you can do. 1 redirect them to another website, or 2 your own homepage. None of them are the perfect option, but both better options than just leaving them to build up masses of 404 errors.

[-Shay-]

Neg seo is not all about pointing **** links at a site, a lot of people, who know what they are doing, create masses of 404 errors to make your site look crap. There are two things you can do. 1 redirect them to another website, or 2 your own homepage. None of them are the perfect option, but both better options than just leaving them to build up masses of 404 errors.

Again, bad advice IMO and dodges my question.

[mickyfu]

Again, bad advice IMO and dodges my question.

I take it you have difficulty reading then. Again my reply.

There are two things you can do. 1 redirect them to another website, or 2 your own homepage. None of them are the perfect option, but both better options than just leaving them to build up masses of 404 errors.

The NSEO is via 404 errors, therefore, you must stop the 404 errors. One way, redirect to home page. This way, one does not lose traffic from other 404 errors, or second, redirect to another website. Like I said no way is a fix, but better than being bombarded with 404 errors.

In your opinion, it is bad advice, please do amuse me and let me know what you would do, other than send the 404 errors somewhere else, as your only other option is to leave them where they are. Great advice.

[-Shay-]

Even rewritten and explained, your take is still bad advice.

A customized and well written 404 page will do just fine. For actual "real users", the 404 page is detailed enough to get the visitor where they want to go.

If I redirect the 404's coming from the negative seo campaign (a negative seo campaign or scraper site is what it sounds like in the OP), then I am also attempting to pass the value (or negative value) on to my homepage in an effort to resolve the excessive 404's. Why in the world would anyone who cares about their site want to risk doing that?

I would rather have the excessive errors than try to pass negative value to my homepage or any other meaningful page on my site. Additionally, I'd disavow the links from the domain(s) that are responsible for causing the 404's.

If you redirect a page that doesn't exist to your homepage, you're creating the illusion that there is in fact a real page there when there is not. Thus, you could end up with a bunch of garbage url's indexing with Google. Again, not ideal and again, why would anyone who cares about their site want to do that?

Here's additional information on this topic which justifies why it is not a good idea to implement the "either/or" redirect solution you proposed.

[Topboss]

Thanks again for everyone's advice and I hope I haven't caused any ructions - I guess that is SEO for you - None of us except the Google God know the real solution.
However after reading everything - What I landed up doing is having a 404 page for genuine visitors and then asked Google to disavow the spammy link page ( it is only one page with 148 links to my site ) so this way I am not redirecting the spammy links but will still get proper visitors for any other errors.