I have sat in long (and draining) meetings with Developers turned SEOs debating over a myth that 404 Error Pages result in multiple penalties on Google. One guy became very emotional in one of the meetings and literally put fear (terror actually), in one of our executives when he bluntly came out saying that our website “was going to disappear from the Google index completely”. As you can imagine this caused quite a stir and resulted in a dozen other meetings just to clear that misconception.
The strange thing is that Google itself has come out multiple times stating that it does not penalize a site for having multiple 404s on a website. But as we know myths tend to stick around and always result in the debate resurfacing, this time with longer meeting and tempers flaring. Let me clear this once and for all – 404 error pages do not cause any penalties on Google. The message is crystal clear in Search Console (read the message from Google – “generally, 404s don’t harm your site’ performance in search…):
Gary Illyes, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst also clarified this issue this week and hope this can give guidance around this myth. I have included the tweet below.
Whoever came up with the idea that having 404s gives a site any sort of penalty, you’re wrong. Utterly wrong.
— Gary Illyes (@methode) August 6, 2015
You can follow the forum discussion on Twitter.
I have never believed that myth and I believe as marketers we need to taking advantage of 404s because let’s face it – they will never really go away. It’s quite easy for a piece of content to disappear from the server either due to CMS failure, a server misconfiguration or even an inaccurately implemented https. If 404s caused errors then we would all be in trouble as our competitors could just start throwing nonsensical links to our websites and take us out of the SERP altogether.
So how do we take advantage of 404s?
We should view 404 error pages as opportunities for us to connect with our lost audience using fun and creative techniques that create a long lasting and pleasant experience, (as opposed to an infuriating one). There are a number of companies that are using these blunders to engage with users and actually get a bit of viral action as well.
Here are a few 404s we can all learn from:
The social media management company uses their mascot intelligently here to create a witty 404 page. Fowl not found – funny right?
This one literally had me on the floor, laughing in tears. When you arrive at this page, you are greeted by a goat which screams like a human alerting you that the page does not exist. Again the digital design agency used this opportunity to not only entertain but also to create some sort of entertainment. Disclaimer: I burnt through my data bundle on my phone playing this over and over again. Visit at your own risk as you might get addicted.
The ultra-hip email newsletter service MailChimp uses their mascot to show you that you are lost somewhere in a misty juggle. This light-hearted approach makes an otherwise boring task something fun and endearing.
The gaming developer created a 404 page that fits in with its general style, using broken glass as a metaphor for the broken link.
