Fixing /1000 Pages in Google Search Console – Neuro-SEO

Do you also have the problem in Google Search Console with "/1000" endings?

Page with redirect Set up Google Search Console? Google is currently receiving an unusually high number of complaints about reported 404 issues in the reporting of Google Search Console. This specifically affects your URLs that end with '/1000', as seen in the screenshot below: Google is aware of the problem and has advised us to ignore it, as the links lead to 404 pages that are currently being fixed. If you see this as a 404 error in your console, you can safely ignore it; you haven't done anything wrong. John Mueller from Google has said on this topic: "There is no need to disavow these links using the disavow tool; it's probably just random spam." But if Google receives a 200 status code in the form of redirects and link injections for such spam pages, then you should take action! For example, like me, you will see this error in Google Search Console under the tab Page Indexing > Page with Redirect. Below, I explain how to deal with the error.

Proper Handling in Google Search Console

Given the potential SEO impact, you should take the following steps: Identify indexed URLs: Use Google Search Console to identify all /1000 URLs that have been indexed. Use canonical tags correctly: If you use canonical tags, make sure they point to the correct, preferred version of the content. Do not use canonical tags to point to unrelated pages, as this can further confuse search engines. Watch out for spam links: Keep an eye on your link profile to identify spam backlinks to these /1000 URLs. Use tools like Google Search Console and consider disavowing spam links using the disavow tool if necessary. Communicate with Google: You can also use the URL parameter tool in Google Search Console to show Google how to handle URLs with certain parameters, such as /1000.

Identify Unwanted URLs and Redirect to 404

First, you need to find all URLs that end with /1000 and currently return a 200 status code. You can do this via server logs, crawl tools, or analytics by searching for patterns that match these URLs.

Configure 404 Errors via WordPress

You can also detect the error pattern "/1000" via WordPress and display 404 errors to Google. You can do this with a redirection tool from Rank Math Tool using regex. Regex, or regular expression, is a powerful language for processing text. It is used to search for, replace, or extract specific patterns in a text. A regular expression consists of a series of characters that describe a pattern to be found in the search string. As the source URL, you must enter ./1000$ as above and display a 404 error as the error code, then the page will be ignored. .*/1000$

Implement 404 Errors Server-Side

After identifying these URLs, you need to set up redirects on the server so that any URL ending with /1000 returns a 404 status code. This can be done with the regex pattern I provided earlier. Here is a step-by-step guide: Create a regex rule: Use the regex pattern .*/1000$ to find any URL ending with /1000. Configure the server: Apply this regex in your web server configuration. If you use Apache, you can add a rule in the .htaccess file; for Nginx, you would add it to the server block. For Apache in .htaccess:

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteRule .*/1000$ - [R=404,L]

For Nginx:

location ~ .*/1000$ {
    return 404;
}

Test the configuration: Test the changes in a staging environment before going live to ensure they work as expected.

Preventing Future Issues

To prevent this problem from occurring in the future, you could: Implement strict URL parameter rules in your web application. Regularly monitor your website for unexpected URL patterns. Update your sitemaps and ensure they do not contain unwanted URLs.

Part of the Google Search Console & Google tools series:

1. Setting up a Google account
2. Google Search Console login
3. Google Search Console: an overview
4. Google Search Console: adding users
5. Google Analytics 4 login
6. Indexing checker for Search Console (script)
7. Page with redirect in Search Console
8. Checking 404 errors and status codes with Google functions
9. Fixing /1000 pages in Search Console (this article)
10. Connecting Google Search Console to BigQuery