In the Search console of Google webmaster, I am getting "Not found" in URL Errors in an extent having suffix /%EF%BB%BF. I have never created these type of pages or in website these URLs never exist. My site traffic is getting hurt due to the issue. If anyone suggests me how to come out of this issue I will be grateful.
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2I doubt your traffic is being hurt by this issue.– John Conde ♦Sep 5, 2015 at 14:11
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Yes John, I have found 10 to 15% of dicrease.– user31225Sep 5, 2015 at 18:20
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2But how do you know the two are related?– John Conde ♦Sep 5, 2015 at 20:45
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2404's doesn't mean your site is broken. If a page doesn't exist a 404 means your site is working. @JohnConde is absolutely right in both statements. Big sites get big 404's in the hundreds to thousands weekly, its common and expected, and Google doesn't punish for it.– Simon HayterSep 5, 2015 at 22:14
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2As well, 404's for pages that do not exist is not an indication of a problem. Google has no idea if a pgage should exist so it creates a notice. If the page does not exist and should not exist, then there is nothing to fix or do. Just let the notices go. Do not mark them as fixed. Just leave them. They will disappear in time. Problem solved.– closetnocSep 6, 2015 at 0:48
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1 Answer
One misstake webmasters make is assuming that because they are getting 404 errors that there is a problem with their site or that there is an attack on their site when neither more that likely is the case. 404's can be caused simply my a user mis-spelling the URL or in the case if an inbound link which Google has detected on another site there being an issue with the way that the link was added to the page. In this particular case with the malformed suffix the way you have shown that would indicate to me that wherever that link exists on the site whatever CMS they are using or software to generate the link had a glitch and rendered the link incorrectly which Google then picked up. Google was unable to tell that the link was a malformed link and so tried to crawl that page anyway. As a 404 error was returned Google worked out that the page doesn't exist and so gave you a warning on it in case the link was meant to exist and left it at that. Google doesn't penalize 404 errors on websites as it is well accepted that due to the nature of the internet and there being no feedback between links which are added to third party sites and your own site that there is no way to prevent 404 errors from occurring. The fact that your site returned a correct hard 404 and not a soft 404 (200 OK status with a HTML page that says Page Not Found) Google accepts that. It is soft 404's that cause issues and can cause ranking issues for your site as it appears to be duplicate content.
answered Jul 7, 2016 at 3:29
