The Shark Tank

404’s and other technical errors are a common and unavoidable occurrence on the internet. Typically, having a few 404 errors will not impact a site’s rankings in any significant way. However, if a site has too many 404 errors, search engines may develop a negative impression of the site and stop indexing this site’s pages. This can result in two serious issues: loss of traffic volume and dead links. Visitor traffic is one important factor in SERP rankings, and a considerable decrease can drop a site’s rankings by a large amount. 404 pages also do not pass on backlink authority, so any quality links from a page that 404’s will no longer contribute to the site’s authority and hurt rankings as well.