[Forum] Getting soft 404 error in google web master tools

[Expert1]

Hello, I am getting soft 404 error in web master tools from a long time. I want response like Page not found, The requested page could not be found instead to redirect any other url. Because of this error i loosing lots of traffic, please help me.
same example of soft error are given below:

http://www.techhotfix.com/forum/sear...hid=354821&pp=
http://www.techhotfix.com/forum/showthread.php
http://www.techhotfix.com/forum/show...rtel-to-airtel
http://www.techhotfix.com/forum/show...ight=save+game

[Hartmut]

Hm, if the threads for example are not there you can not do much about it I guess. Also you can't redirect showthread.php itself as every link using this script would be redirected then and you forum would break.

[Expert1]

All links which I have given was working fine but now I am getting soft 404 error. And this soft error are increasing day by day and at present i got 155 urls on which I getting this error. I want remove this error because of this i am suffering from huge loss in traffic from last 20 days. Please help me brother.

All thread on which i am getting this error are not deleted but not showing in forum search. Some of the threads removed from google index and some showing in cache version in google result.

[Expert1]

Somebody please help.

[Zachery]

There is nothing actually wrong with the vBulletin software. There isn't much you can do about the errors you're running into with the stock configuration.

[Expert1]

Yes my brother, I know you are right but I what dont want this error "No Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator". This means the when user browser try to open broken or invalid link or deleted thread or post or url which does not exist then it should return standard "404 page not found" error instead of "No Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator" error. Because it does not return "404 page not found" this means it is throwing error 200. If broken link returning error 200 so user not getting link which is was tried to open but redirecting to other link like above error. Because of this error google reduces my traffic.
Please help me, and let me change stock configuration to standard configuration which required by google. Please forward my issue to who can do modify in coding. Thank You.

[Hartmut]

Actually we don't support code modifications, so www.vbulletin.org would be the proper place to start your request.

[Budget101]

It shouldn't be a "modification", it should be stock- it's BASIC SEO.

[Budget101]

There is nothing actually wrong with the vBulletin software. There isn't much you can do about the errors you're running into with the stock configuration.

There is definitely something wrong with it, actually there are MANY things Wrong with it, currently the fact that it incorrectly returns the WRONG error msg to Major search engines is at the top of my list with what is Wrong with it!

Oh and VB is WELL aware of the issues:


http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...78c88be5da613c


http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBIV-10757

http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/...mment-tabpanel

http://tracker.vbulletin.com/browse/VBIV-15627

As usual, they just don't give a damn.

[Wayne Luke]

Being aware and being able to provide an easy fix via technical support are two different things. If we had a workaround or quick fix, we would provide it. Resolving this requires modifying the software. That requires development resources and JIRAs to be created to get those resources.

If you have a desperate need, you will need to get a code modification. With current processes, this isn't going to be fixed in 4.X for a while. It will probably be fixed in 5.X before it happens here.