Google PSA: Do Not 301 Pages that Should 404 To Your Home Page

Jan 8, 2019 - 7:55 am 9 by

Google Highway

Google's John Mueller said it again, if you 301 redirect pages that should 404 to your home page, Google will treat them as soft 404s anyway and thus all you are doing is confusing your end users. There is no benefit in using a 301 redirect for a page that you killed off when you are redirecting it to a page that is not relevant to that 404 page.

You should only 301 redirect pages to other pages that have a one to one relationship and not ones that are unrelated. So if you have a page about apples and you decide to get rid of it, redirecting your apple page to your home page is not useful.

John Mueller said on Twitter it is not useful to users and is treated as a 404 anyway. Here is the tweet:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Updates

Google Search Ranking Update Volatility May 16th

May 18, 2025 - 8:15 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 16, 2025

May 16, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google Ads

Google's Pichai: Search Ads With AI Overviews Earn Same As Ads Without

May 16, 2025 - 8:50 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Rethinking Search, Replacing Reddit, Search Console Annotations & So Much More

May 16, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

Google Maps 2024: 999 Million Reviews & 752 Million Photos / Videos Published

May 16, 2025 - 7:51 am
Apple App Store

Apple Maps Adds Insights, Ratings & Reviews From More Sources

May 16, 2025 - 7:41 am
Previous Story: G Logo Made Of Google Colored Basketballs