Pages that appear like error pages may be thought-about comfortable 404 by Google

A few months ago, Google informed us that they would be returning a Page type “Results not found” Can cause Google search to consider this page as a soft 404 and thus remove it from the search results. The same applies to “Unfortunately we do not deliver to this place” or other negative and faulty pages.

Here is a new case where Google removed pages from its index that had the text “Sorry, we don’t ship to this location” on those pages. A tweet from Nikhil Raj. R showed the website’s 404 soft page count skyrocketing while Google search traffic and impressions dropped significantly.

All category pages said “Unfortunately we do not deliver to this location”. This was shown to customers entering a PIN code that we do not ship to but that was part of the page by default. This text was removed from the page and the soft 404 fixed! #seo @JohnMu @method @rustybrick https://t.co/j3UEsXXb3U

– Nikhil Raj. R (@nikhilrajr) December 30, 2021

Here are closer looks at these screenshots above Twitter:

Soft 404s increasing:

Traffic is falling:

Google’s John Mueller confirmed this on Twitter, saying, “Yes, if you made your pages look like they were error pages, we could treat them as such. It’s similar to having a noindex on it and using JavaScript, to selectively remove him. Good job find that! “

Yes, if you make your pages look like they could be error pages we might treat them as such. It’s like having a noindex on it and using JavaScript to selectively remove it. Nice job finding that!

– 🐄 John 🐄 (@JohnMu) December 30, 2021

So this is just another reminder to be careful with these types of pages. You don’t necessarily want them all off the Google index.

Thanks for the mention and sharing the information, Barry 🙂 For those who need more details – the “Sorry” text has been hidden in CSS and made visible when needed. Now an apology text is inserted into a function that is triggered based on the user interaction with the address selection.

– Nikhil Raj. R (@nikhilrajr) January 4, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.