Official statement
On a page returning a 404 or 410 status code, Google ignores all the content of the page, including robots meta tags and rel canonical links. What you put on a 404 page is completely irrelevant to Google.
Other statements from this video 19 ▾
- □ Why Should Structured Data Focus on the Main Element of a Page?
- □ Why does Google insist that reviews be published directly on your site?
- □ Do incorrect structured data really have no impact on SEO rankings?
- □ How can you effectively manage out-of-stock products with SEO?
- □ Why don’t individual product fluctuations affect your SEO?
- □ How can you enhance keyword visibility to capture attention?
- □ What makes Google favor a copy over the original content?
- □ How does your site's quality impact the indexing of duplicated content?
- □ How Does Hreflang Really Impact Your SEO?
- □ Why does Google prioritize user data for Core Web Vitals?
- □ Is it true that the disavow file poses no risks for your SEO?
- □ Why does Google overlook direct traffic as a ranking factor for SEO?
- □ Should breadcrumbs really reflect the URL structure?
- □ Is linking to the same page twice from the menu an SEO blunder?
- □ Does the length of a URL really have no impact on your SEO?
- □ Why doesn’t Google index all of your content?
- □ Does the overall quality of your site really affect crawl demand?
- □ Does noindex really help improve your site's perceived quality?
- □ What happens when Core Web Vitals can't be used for certain sites?
Official statement from
(5 years ago)
⚠ A more recent statement exists on this topic
Do 404 Errors Really Hurt Your Website's Rankings?
View statement →
TL;DR
Google does not take into account the content of 404 or 410 pages. Therefore, meta tags and instructions on these pages are useless. Focus your efforts elsewhere.
🎥 From the same video 19
Other SEO insights extracted from this same Google Search Central video · published on 19/06/2021
🎥 Watch the full video on YouTube →
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