Pages of 404s

[bizdoktor]

The events calendar is regularly generating pages of 404s for links from the booking form. We spent hours going in regularly to create permanent re-directs. Then once we have cleaned up pc links we have to go through and clean up 9 pages for smartphone! I have snagged a copy of some of the items for reference.
A snapshot of some of the links registering as 404s.

[George]

Hey @Bizdoktor,

I’m really sorry about all of the time you wasted on this, and am sorry for the frustration!

These 404s are not actually problematic – read more about why these 404s exist and what they mean on this Knowledgebase Article here: https://theeventscalendar.com/knowledgebase/404_and_seo/

Thank you!
George

[bizdoktor]

Hi George

Hmmm that is not the same Yoast is on?
https://yoast.com/404-error-pages-checking/

I did a search on Yoast for “404” and that link seems to nail it … But a lot of other good stuff on the topic!
We do like to keep our and clients sites fresh and tidy… This mess your plugin generates is maybe an issue you should fix with yoast and add a filter for “Soft” vs “Hard” 404’s so – we that have Yoast SEO PRO don’t get overloaded with soft 404’s and a huge clean up job!?
Just my 5 cent on the matter…

[George]

We’ve worked with Yoast’s plugins in the past and indeed strive for compatibility. However, the link you provided does not address the 404 issues specific to The Events Calendar.

I appreciate your input here and to be clear, I’m not saying that there’s nothing we can do to improve things! We are working on better ways to handle the number of 404s generated.

However, the 404s are shown in a diagnostic tool. It is simply a diagnostic tool, which is suggesting that you look into those 404 errors, but there is no “SEO penalty” or any other negative fallout from those 404s existing.

I hope that helps!
George

[bizdoktor]

Hi George,

I contacted Yoast … Here is their answer to this topic:

Regarding SEO and “soft 404s”… lets quote Google here:

“We see two kinds of 404 (“File not found”) responses on the web: “hard 404s” and “soft 404s.” We discourage the use of so-called “soft 404s” because they can be a confusing experience for users and search engines.”

That quote is found here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/farewell-to-soft-404s.html

Additionally: Google said, “Soft 404s can limit a site’s crawl coverage by search engines because these duplicate URLs may be crawled instead of pages with unique content.”

That quote is found here: http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-tools-adds-soft-404-pages-43748

[George]

Hey @Bizdoktor,

Unfortunately regardless of further information and such, the only real actionable step that could be taken would be to install and activate our “No 404s” hotfix plugin, which you can download here → http://m.tri.be/no404s

Install and activate that on your site; if 404s are damaging your site, then this plugin will at least force our 404 headers to become 200 status headers instead. That may help.

Cheers,
George

[Support Droid]

This topic has not been active for quite some time and will now be closed.

If you still need assistance please simply open a new topic (linking to this one if necessary)
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[Author]

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