Google Search Console showing obsolete product pages

Shopify Discussion
1

Hi guys,

I am trying to do some work the google search console. It is telling me I have 8.24K pages that gave a 404 redirect. It would take some time to manually make a redirect for this number of pages. Most, I can tell, were only live for a short time - a product that was loaded incorrectly and subsequently changed for example. Some are showing a country code (e.g. fr - showing they were searched in France, I think)

I don’t think I’d loose any SEO brownie points if I just cleared these pages completely. Is that correct? But how? Where do I find them in? In the Index? How? They are not is the list of products as they have been deleted there, but they are still getting crawled. Any suggestions how to tidy this up please? Thanks in advance.

2

Hello,

If you publish a language and then un-publish that language, it will result in 404 errors.

The only way to tidy it up for GSC purposes is to add redirects. You can’t “find them”, because they don’t exist - the pages are gone. They may drop out of GSC after a few months given they should no longer be in your sitemap.

If you have real visitors landing on those pages, then take a look at NotFoundBot. It will auto redirect visitors to the correct page without the need for setting up manual redirects.

Good luck!

Travis

3

Hi there,

To address the issue of 404 errors in Google Search Console for your Shopify website, here are some steps and considerations:

  1. Understanding 404 Errors: 404 errors occur when a page is not found. These can happen if a product was incorrectly loaded and then removed, as you mentioned.

  2. Impact on SEO: While having some 404 errors is normal and won’t necessarily harm your SEO, having a large number of them can be problematic. It’s important to manage them effectively.

  3. Finding 404 Errors: In Google Search Console, you can find these errors under the “Coverage” section. Look for the “Errors” tab where 404 errors will be listed.

  4. Handling 404 Errors:

    • Redirects: If there are pages that were temporarily live and have been removed, consider setting up 301 redirects to relevant pages (e.g., category pages or similar products). This can be done using Shopify’s URL redirect feature.
    • Remove from Index: If the pages are no longer relevant and you don’t want them indexed, ensure they are removed from your sitemap and use the “Remove URLs” tool in Google Search Console to request their removal from Google’s index.

  5. Country-Specific URLs: If you see country codes like “fr” in the URLs, it might be due to international targeting settings or users accessing your site from different regions. Ensure your hreflang tags are correctly set up if you have international versions of your site.

  6. Prevent Future Issues: Regularly audit your site for broken links and ensure that any changes to product URLs are managed with proper redirects.

For more detailed guidance, you might want to consult with an SEO professional or use tools like Screaming Frog to crawl your site and identify issues before they affect search engines.

For further reading on managing 404 errors, you can refer to this Yoast article.

I hope this helps. Good luck with optimizing your Shopify store.