Google Treats 404 & 410 Status Codes Differently: Matt Cutts

Here in a recently posted webmaster video, The Spam King Google’s Matt Cutts explains about the HTTP status code 404 (Not Found) and 410 (Gone).

Actually, the subject came up when another time Blind Five Years Old from California asked Matt, "Does Google do anything different when encountering a 404 versus a 410?"

Matt response as his word, "404 versus 410 refers to HTTP status code so whenever browser or Google bot asks for page the web server sends back a status code 200 might mean it everything went totally fine 404 means the page was not found and 410 typically means gone as in the page is not found and we do not expect it to come back." In a short answer Matt said, Google treats 404 and 410 differently and should not worry about it.

With a 404 along with 401 & 403 status codes, Google will protect that page for 24 hours in the crawling system. With a 410 status code, Google will mark the page Gone rather than protecting it for 24 hours.

Cutts added, although that is the case, GoogleBot will go returning and check both 404 and 410 responses later to ensure the page is really not there. Google is aware of bugs and server issues that happen and thus will come returning later, several times, other the course of years, to examine to see if the page is ever brought back.

Useful Tip:

The difference is only essential if you want to optimize a website that has a lot changing content. With 410 discarded contents will be removed quickly from the index, ie exactly 24 hours earlier. This really is hardly important, unless a website is operating on the edge of their crawl and index budgets.

Here is Original Video:

Hope that will help, send your suggestion through the comment box.

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Matt Cutts Talks about Coming Algorithm Changes for Authorities

In a recently released webmaster help video, The Spam King Google's Matt Cutts talks on how does Google separate popularity from authority. He also gives the hint for upcoming changes to its algorithm by saying "looking forward to those rolling out" but not giving any specific dates or anything.

Actually, the subject came up when Blind Five Years Old from California asked Matt, "As Google continues to add social signals to the algorithm, how do you separate simple popularity from true authority?"

Matt answered that question quickly by saying that the first half is an "assumption" about social signals in ranking algorithm. The rest of time, he only talks about authority vs. popularity by saying, "We have actually thought about this quite a bit because from the earliest days it would get us really kind of frustrated when we would see reporters talk about PageRank, and say, 'PageRank is a measure of popularity of websites,' because that's not true."

He explaining it more generally by giving the example that porn sites are often way more popular than government or organization sites but government sites are often more authoritative than porn sites because a lot of people go to porn sites, but not a lot of people link to them, and the other side people link to government websites, but not as many go to them. They want the government sites to have authority, but porn sites not so much. So the two concepts are different.

How does Google decide which site is more appropriate or authoritative for a query, so by query or class of query. Matt said that Google is working on new algorithms. He said Google showing sites that actually have some evidence that is should rank for something related to queries. And that is something where we can enhance the quality of the algorithm even more.

Cyrus Shepard shares five assumptions from this Matt Cutt’s Video. Here they are mentioned below:

1. Google continuously tries to minimize the role of social signals in the algorithm. Now! Google is going with social signals is the idea of establishing identity.

2. Raw social signals are messy. Identity is a much more useful signal for determining authority than raw social signals, which can be gamed. Identity on the web is difficult to determine, but Google+ helps a lot. Matt does not clearly say this, but this and past statements support this assumption very well.

3. In the past, Google rewarded highly authoritative websites through traditional signals analogous to trust authority and domain authority, which were extremely reliant on raw PageRank and anchor text signals. This promoted sites with high domain authority scores even for long tail terms that they weren’t actually an expert on. He gives the example: New York Times ranking for a page on Justin Bieber, the reason is that they have the authority of the New York Times.

4. Going ahead, Google plans to integrate better authority and relevance signals (based on identity, semantic analysis and other aspects). The result of which is the impact of traditional Domain Authority signals will diminish.

5. How do we adapt and take benefits of Google’s new relevance signals? (Yet to be proven or released)

• Become an authority.
• Set up real as authors.
• Publish regularly best-of-class authoritative content on particular topics.
• Keep use good site architecture and best semantic methods to make the meaning of your content clear to Google.
• Actively promote your content through influencers and influential channels (this not include in link building, it is focused distribution).

Hope that will helps. And Don't forget to comment your opinion...

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