: Error HTTP 404 can eliminate indexing of a page? In recent weeks I'm recording a decrease of indexing my site: In 10/09/2016: Submitted => 921 Indexed => 654 Yesterday 23/09/2016: Submitted

@LarsenBagley505

I think you are possibly asking the wrong question/s based on the wrong impressions.


Error HTTP 404 can eliminate indexing of a page?


Google bot does rank pages that do not exist. I see more and more people worrying about 404 errors, when I see no evidence clearly stating that they should. With that there is no need for Google to index and show those results in search engines as none of it is user relevant, when searching.


I had 439 crawls errors (because when Google had crawled those links, the pages had not yet been created).


That is a friendly way of letting you know, that links you submitted have errors.

If you had created content filled pages that were resulting in 404 errors, than I would be concerned as to why content is not showing up. Again, Google is not there to punish or ignore your sites content.

Let me explain it like this way.

You have an Easter Egg hunt.


500 eggs are placed within an area to be searched. (Your content
pages and your website)
400 eggs were found. So you inform people that there are 100 eggs
not found. (Google lets you know about the pages)


Do you punish the kids for not finding the eggs, or give them hints or other helpful info to locate them? No punishments would be given and neither does Google punish you. (Google is trying to help you locate non resolved content)

Now if kids came back with eggs that had poop in them, just as the kids would be unhappy with the results, so would Google if you did such a deplorable act. Which would be to trick users by stuffing keywords or using redirects to irrelevant and non useful content (in the form of things like adult sites), POOP!

Ultimately the 404 pages are not a big deal and so you should not expect to have the no content pages indexed as useful content when in fact they are not.

A couple of alternative options:


Hide the links and pages. No visitor wants to see 439 links and not one works. It is a poor user experience.
Use of noIndex, noFollow for the said links/pages.


At this point: If all pages are created and links are properly working.


Create a sitemap
Submit it to Google
Fetch and render
Submit to index
Let Googlebot do its thing


Unless you have Google telling you to specifically fix an error.

No need to keep unseeding what is properly sewn.

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@Courtney195

Sounds like very bad practice to upload a page for 2 months(!) with links to pages not yet created...


Google probably checked if they are there several times the past months.
Checking that is only for you. It dont give any feedback to Google.
Use "Fetch as Google" -> Submit page and every link related to the page. On the page with all the links.
??


Also, submit a sitemap and wait.

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