Google Cache 404 Error – Effect on Rankings

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I have been working a couple of websites based around affiliate marketing and some neat observations have come to light.

Google cache for one of our website URLs showing a 404 error even though the same page shows up in SERPS

Before I describe those observations, I feel the need to describe some background history.

Hostgator World is basically a resource site which I started in 2008 containing Hostgator reviews, coupons, and tips. We’ve been big fans of Hostgator and naturally it made sense for us to create such a website.

For about 3 years since its inception, it used to have very minimal content focusing on just the bare essentials. But just recently we decided to revamp the current theme, structure, and content.

I’ve been working on this with Rohan for about 2 months now and I’m pretty pleased with the result apart from one small issue:

The rankings for all our main keywords have dropped and Google cache for some URLs is showing a 404 error.

Case In Point

Here’s a google search in exact quote for the title of one of our pages. The search results show the page indexed giving a false goodie-good feeling.

Search result for one of our pages on Hostgatorworld.com. Gives the impression that the page has been cached by Google.

But, on clicking the “Cached” link along with the search result, we were redirected to a Google 404 page with the following text:

404. That’s an error.

The requested URL /search?q=cache:mBuxk0fMmwcJ:hostgatorworld.com/support/hostgator-... was not found on this server. That’s all we know.

Why Does It Happen

Intrigued by the turn of events, I decided to do some research and here are my findings. Some of these concepts are well known and some not-so-well-known. If you’re going through the same phase, then I hope these tips will help.

1) Frequent Structural Changes: Its absolutely normal for rankings to drop if you’re making huge structural changes on your website. This is especially true if your website is an aged domain which had previous indexed content. More so if you have completely altered the links on every page, changed the layout or design, and/or played with content (added or deleted or modified).

Note: By changes, I do not mean adding new content on your pages. That is completely fine (after all, blogs are based around the same concept).

2) Expect Drop In Rankings: We have been making changes almost every day for the last two months so its completely natural for Google to get confused. Hence, sometimes you may even find your website off the index or severe ranking drops till the time you’re completely set and not making any major alterations.

3) Google Cache 404 Error: The major revamp also explains the 404 error on the cache pages because of the constant changes being made to almost every page on the site. Give it a few days and you shall notice a refreshed Google cache with all your latest pages with no gnarly 404 cache pages.

4) Sitemap Re-Submission: The cache 404 errors can also appear if you have recently re-submitted your sitemap in Google webmaster tools because then the Google bot does a complete scan of all the pages in your sitemap and it may take a few days for the Cache to reflect current pages.

The Solution

If you plan on making frequent structural changes, for say, a month. Then re-submit a sitemap to Google with a “1 month” change frequency mentioned for all your pages.

After a month, once you are done, submit the sitemap again with the normal ‘change frequency’.

To conclude, if your website’s Google cache pages lead to a 404 page like the one above, then make sure you finish all the changes you have been making on your website and let it rest for a bit.