Categories Soft 404

  • Resolved joegp

    (@joegp)


    6 years, 4 months ago

    Hi, i just got an email from Google Search Console, saying i have “Coverage issues” and it’s caused by this page https://effortless.marketing/category/uncategorized/
    so basically the default uncategorized category.

    Because i have no posts assigned to it when visiting that link i get a 404 error, but so will any other category that is not being used by any post.

    This is kinda a huge deal, which makes me think this is either a very recent issue or one that maybe only i have, either way a 404 error is not what i should have.

    The only way to fix this from my end, is to assign a post to use it or to delete it, but for some reason the uncategorized category cannot be deleted, maybe because it’s the first/default one.

    We have plenty of posts and plenty categories we just don’t use that one (and no serious blogger should)

    Can and should i rename it to a category we do use and delete that one ?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    6 years, 4 months ago

    Right, you can’t delete it but you can rename it and then use it like any other category. WordPress returns a “200” on that page, not a “404”. Interesting.

    Request URL: https://effortless.marketing/category/uncategorized/
Request Method: GET
Status Code: 200 OK
Remote Address: 104.194.11.210:443
Referrer Policy: unsafe-url
    Thread Starter joegp

    (@joegp)

    6 years, 4 months ago

    Thanks for the quick reply, i’ll do that then.
    The “unsafe-url” part doesn’t sound very good either, so i still think WordPress should do something about it.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    6 years, 4 months ago

    That’s a response from your web server and has nothing to do with WordPress.

    https://www.w3.org/TR/referrer-policy/#referrer-policy-unsafe-url

    Thread Starter joegp

    (@joegp)

    6 years, 4 months ago

    you’re not saying going to an empty category and getting a page not found error is something WordPress doesn’t have to fix are you ?

    cuz i work on a lot of websites that don’t have any posts and we delete the sample one, so there is always an empty category on those sites, that cannot be deleted or something assigned to it.

    Moderator Steven Stern (sterndata)

    (@sterndata)

    Volunteer Forum Moderator

    6 years, 4 months ago

    My usual checklist when setting up a site is to rename “uncategorized” to either “I forgot to classify this” or “Other”.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

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