Hello and welcome again to another office Hours episode.
I Hope you like the new format. If not, let us know in the comments below. Let us know in the comment below and leave a like if you do like the format.
Today’s Question Comes from Chris. Chris is asking redirecting all 404 pages to the homepages with 301 redirects can have a negative impact on rankings or overall website performance in search. Yes and also annoys me as a user. A 404 is a very clear signal. This link is wrong and broken or the URL no longer exists because maybe the product doesn’t exist or something has changed in what you do on your website and then I know what I’m dealing with. But if I get redirected to the homepages, then I say, what it that? A 404 is the end of the road, especially for a crawler. They go like homepage and then click through or basically crawl through your website finding the content and eventually they might run into a URL that doesn’t exist or does no longer exist. And then they know, okay, so that’s no longer a thing. I can move on somewhere else. But if you redirect, they’re kind of like being redirected and then it all starts over again. It’s a weird, like, why, why would that. That’s not helpful. That’s not helpful to me as a user. Tell me if something on longer exists and I’m like, okay, so they removed it or removed it somewhere else. If it moved somewhere else, use a redirect. If it’s gone, don’t redirect me to the homepage or what you think is the closest. No, if it’s no longer there, it’s no longer there. That is fine. It’s a clear signal to a crawler to not spend and waste effort there. It’s a clear and obvious signal to me as a user that this no longer exists. Leave it at that. And with that I hope that helpful and thank you so much for reading our article and let us know if you like the new format for your office hours and send us your questions as well and hopefully we’ll answering them soon bye.
