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Topic: Return hard 404 or 410 status code for pages that are blocked (Read 4000 times) previous topic - next topic
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Return hard 404 or 410 status code for pages that are blocked

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/181708?hl=en

Google is bugging me, because a topic got moderated, and suddenly became a "Soft 404".

Apparently, they have never heard of people posting spam and then immediately submitting the public link for Google indexing. I guess they expect every forum script to hide search engine blocked content with a hard 404 or 410 error if it is no longer to be indexed.

Re: Return hard 404 or 410 status code for pages that are blocked

Reply #1 –

hmm... the 200 is fishy indeed [1], though I don't think neither 404 nor 410 are actually correct either, because elk doesn't really check if the topic/board/profile/admin/moderation/etc. actually exists or not (well, it does, but the result is the same in both cases, and it would not be correct to tell the difference, pretty much like with password) it just knows that the current user (a guest) is not allowed to access the resource.

I would lean towards a 403 in that case.
1 Though the "soft 404" concept is... google GTFO. xD↵
Bugs creator.
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Re: Return hard 404 or 410 status code for pages that are blocked

Reply #2 –

Barely related: I also have to add a 301 redirect for semantic url that do not match the subject.
Bugs creator.
Features destroyer.
Template killer.

Re: Return hard 404 or 410 status code for pages that are blocked

Reply #3 –

Quote from: kode54 – Google is bugging me, because a topic got moderated, and suddenly became a "Soft 404".
Google was telling me I had a bunch of pages 404-ing (not on Elk) that never even existed. Optimistic spammers?

Also, soft 404? roflmao