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on SOTR: Yet another reason to NOT redirect all 404s to a homepage or category page. 404s & 410s do NOT waste crawl budget, but Soft 404s DO waste crawl budget. If you have a large-scale site, choose wisely when deciding when to redirect: glennga.be/3pMBNQ1

GIF

12:14 PM · Aug 26, 2022

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: As Gary explains, "With soft 404s, you aren't adding anything to the index AND you're wasting crawl budget." Me: Again, 404s are not a sign of low quality & can be good. Don't blindly redirect 404s elsewhere unless it makes sense: glennga.be/3pMBNQ1

GIF

Darth Autocrat (Lyndon NA)

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Love the inclusion/specificity of "... if you have a large-scale site ..." !

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LOL, yes, I HAD to include that. There are many worrying about crawl budget that don't need to. Gary mentioned that at the beginning of the podcast too.

Darth Autocrat (Lyndon NA)

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For confirmation/clarification: Does that mean when GBot encounters a 404/410 response, that attempt is not counted against the allocated budget? Bonus questions :D What about redirects ... do 301s/302s eat budget?

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Right, 404/410s don't waste crawl budget. Redirects do count towards crawl budget, which is one of the reasons they recommend to watch out for "long redirect chains". That's in their docs several times.

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What about if a 404/410 URL has backlinks? Isn’t is helpful to redirect the “link juice”?