dsIDXpress is our IDX WordPress plugin and as many clients can attest, it’s a great tool that assists you in gaining higher rankings in search engines. However, we’ve often been asked the question: “Why are so many of dsIDXpress pages returning 404 errors and can this be resolved?”
Which brings us to today’s post… We thought we’d give you the scoop on how 404 errors work because really, 404 errors are actually a very normal part of the internet.
First, let’s talk about dsIDXpress and why they return 404 errrors…
dsIDXpress is meant to display listings that are on the real estate market and available for purchase. It is not meant to show listings that have been sold or taken off the market. Most MLS’ actually do not even allow us to show listings that are sold -OR- if they do allow us to show sold listing data it is only for a preset amount of time.
So what happens to dsIDXpress when listings are sold or go off the market?
They return 404 errors.
So, what is a 404 error?
A 404 error is a standard error used across the web to indicate that a page no longer exists. As with dsIDXpress listing pages, when a listing goes off the market, that particular listing page NO LONGER EXISTS.
Ok, but why are 404 errors used?
Because dsIDXpress pages are actual pages of content we have to tell search engines (and visitors to your site) that the page no longer exists. For example, let’s say “Listing X” just sold yesterday and was marked in the MLS that it was sold. Let’s also say that this same listing was indexed in Google in your own site previously (before it was sold). Now let’s say “Buyer Y” Googled a phrase that produced a link to this sold listing. When they click that link to a page that no longer exists they will receive a 404 error. This tells “Buyer Y” that the page no longer exists. What it also does though, is tell Google that the page no longer exists but not because the link was clicked… Let me explain that next…
Once your website is indexed in Google and other search engines, those search engines will come back to your site regularly to check for new pages of content and other changes to your site (read our post on Google XML Sitemaps). One of those other changes they look for are 404 errors. When search engines find a 404 error for a page it tells them that this page is no longer in existence and should be removed from their search engine index. And thus, they remove that page from their index.
Why is this important?
Well, let’s imagine 404 errors did not exist and search engines didn’t use them to remove pages from their index that no longer exist. You then go to your favorite search engine to search for the latest and greatest book about weight loss, you click on a result and nothing… You click on another URL…again, nothing.
If search engines did not use 404 errors to remove pages that no longer exist, guess what you would often find instead of what you were looking for? NOTHING!! How frustrating would that be if search engines didn’t remove pages from their index that no longer existed!
And that’s why 404 pages exist and why 404 pages are returned for dsIDXpress on listing pages that are no longer on the market.
But that begs the question… Do 404 errors hurt my site or rankings in search engines?
Nope!
Again, 404 errors are a perfectly natural part of the web. 404 errors do not count against you in search engines at all. They help keep the web and search engines clean and help people find valid, rather than invalid, pages on your website. New content is born and old content dies every day on the web. Search engines are aware of this and actually prefer that when you get rid of a page on your site, you return a proper 404 response.
So there you have it. That’s the scoop on 404 error pages. In a future post, we’ll show you some of the best 404 error pages so that you can get some ideas on how you might customize your own 404 error page like this one from Miamism:
As always, the comments are yours 🙂
@Ribeezie I saw your 404 thread in the Diverse Solution forum, so I quit worrying about 404’s. Thanks for the “more info” found here as follow-up.
Hi Cindy,
You my dear, are awesome. Yeah, I was posting it here for everyone else to reference – it’s a question we get weekly. So hopefully, this helps clear up some mis-conceptions.
In an upcoming post, I’ll dive into how to customize a 404 error page 🙂
I found a 404 plugin that redirects all unavailable requests to a custom page. I put a quick message and then dropped in the short code for our featured properties to display. Example here: HendersonPropertyManagment.com. May as well take an extra opportunity to highlight some properties, especially since that’s what they were looking for in the first place.
Hey Mark,
Just curious… What’s the plugin that you’re using? Otherwise, I definitely like the way you’ve set up the landing page.
I think a good landing page gives people a few options: 1.) search the archives here, 2.) click to go back to the previous page, 3.) start a new search here. Something like that.
Most themes come with a 404 page that you can edit straight from your WordPress dashboard. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to edit it as easily 🙂
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/404-to-start/ –
I’ll probably update our landing pages across all sites once I get a feel for how this plugin works. I spent about an hour researching various plugins, broke a few things and ended up with this one. Good luck.
btw – I love how miamism designed their 404 page.
Yep, I love what Ines did with it too. It’s different ya know. Totally fits her personality and it’s easy to get to where you might want to navigate next.
How about if it redirects to the map search? That would work for me instead of a 404 page where Buyer Y leaves the site.
You can easily put the map search on you 404 page. But why not also give ’em some options: wanna search? Looking for a particular neighborhood? Wanna see the blog archives?
Ines’ sample page is excellent in my opinion. I’ll have some others to share this upcoming week.
How about if it redirects to the map search? That would work for me instead of a 404 page where Buyer Y leaves the site.
Hi Ricardo,
I love reading your articles… but I really love the idea of presenting similar properties on the 404 page. In other words something like this: say someone is searches for a Townhouses in Miami beach at the price of $275,000 and the reach a 404 error due to being sold. I have designed a plugin that searches the data base and pulls up all the townhouses in that price range in Miami beach and says something like… Sorry.. you just missed that one, however take a look here at the other 7 townhouses right there nearby in that price range and hurry now… they might sell be fore you can get there.. and now I show on the 404 page the ones that are available.. Google gets a google does not get a 404 page so they keep my page indexed… and they actually crawl it and now index it with the new data.. which is not a page with a single property, but a page now with several properties. so my client is now happy and google is happy… and my pages continue to build exponentially instead of dying each time a property sells. I am looking into seeing if I can modify it to work with Diverse Solutions. It reallly makes a lot of sense.
Keep up the great articles I am always learning some thing new from you.
Tom Chambers
Oh.. just saw Mark Masden reply below where he directed the 404 error page to his featured properties.. that is a great idea, but just think how much more valuable it would be if you re-direct them to not just a featured property, but exactly what they are looking for same price range same type and all…. WOW! which brings me to an even more important point… when we change from one domain to another, and we have 100,000 pages indexed… the worst thing we can do is simply direct all those pages to the index page of the new site.. First if we don’t dircect them then when that domain name goes away google sees 100,000 404 errors as he recrawls the old site.. and if we direct all 100,000 to the index page of the new site google sees 100,000 dupe pages (whooeeee 100,000 dupe content page… not good..) So what is a body to do…. have you ever tried to re-direct 100,000 pages to similar content on the new site… talk about a mess… its easy if anyone has that problem just give me a ring and I will tell you how to fix it immediatley and google will love you for it.
Tom Chambers
Google itself warns about 404 errors, as it’s not that they directly affect authority or ranking, but they will cause the index of that page to be eliminated if not addressed in a timely manner? And once corrected the rank of the page is frequently reset to 0 and the previous authority isn’t the same, or wasn’t that was the way once back when people worried about that sort of thing.
Google itself warns about 404 errors, as it’s not that they directly affect authority or ranking, but they will cause the index of that page to be eliminated if not addressed in a timely manner? And once corrected the rank of the page is frequently reset to 0 and the previous authority isn’t the same, or wasn’t that was the way once back when people worried about that sort of thing.
Hi just a quick one, what if I have so many 404s just like 3,000 404s. Is that a bad metric?
404s won’t hurt you. Everytime an MLS listing goes the market or otherwise is removed from the IDX feed, the dsIDXpress page for that listing will result in a 404 error. Usually the number of 404 errors is a good metric to monitor, however due to the churn of IDX listings, a site using dsIDXpress will always see an abnormally high number of 404 errors.
Jason if you have a GWT google toolbox then go to the 404s and look to see how many are detail pages.. with the full mls number… meaning its mostly detail pages… most of those will be sold properties… which is ok…if they are valid otherwise then you need to research and fix them… if you have not cleaned out the toolbox.. in several months and you are in a heavy MLS selling area they will over load you… it they are sold its ok to leave them however I find that they actually obscure me keeping track of valid 404 that I need to fix.. several things you can do… 1. What I do is scan to see if all have mls numbers and spot check a few and if they are sold I assume all are sold and blanket delete. I think if you expand the page you can auto check and delete about a hundred at a whaack… that keeps the 404 box cleaned up so you can see valid repairs needed…
2. The other think you can do is every few days when you go in keep note of the last date you looked and keep them in date order and just review the new ones base on date.. any that appear to be MLS numbers skip.. but look to see if you have any valid ones to fix… you especially need to watch the box closely on running up a new site or a domain change since that is when you are most likely to have done something wrong to cause valid errors.
So bottom line 404 is normal.. unless you see some not sold…
A friend recently formatted a url at the bottom of the page wrong which resulted in a ton of errors… thanks to the toolbox he was able to fix it before it completely got out of hand.
If you keep it cleaned up do not be alarmed when google dumps a lot of those same one back in the box… just delete them again.. not a problem.. and you will notice they will reappar maybe 3 or 4 times before going away forever.. you see google does not remove the 404 on first hit.. they take 3 to 6 hits before they finally remove it… Hope this is helpful and not too confusing
Thanks for this! I’ve seen around a lot of speculation about 404s. Even in the seminar I attended they mentioned that it can actually hurt rankings because of a bad user experience. Anyways thanks for the clarification!
Thanks for this! I’ve seen around a lot of speculation about 404s. Even in the seminar I attended they mentioned that it can actually hurt rankings because of a bad user experience. Anyways thanks for the clarification!