Find and fix 404 errors after the relaunch

Where the errors come from

• Forgotten lines in the redirect map.
• Old links with parameters, uppercase letters, or a trailing slash.
• Images and PDFs that are located under new addresses.
• Links from the outside, which were never in a sitemap.
• Printed addresses and QR codes that point to old pages.

Find errors

In the Google Search Console, the page indexing report shows pages that have not been found. The server log reveals which addresses are actually accessed. A crawler finds broken internal links. And a custom 404 page that counts visits shows what visitors experience.

Prioritize correctly

First fix the errors that visitors bring: pages with external links, frequently accessed old addresses, and printed links. A 404 on a page that no one has ever visited can wait.

A helpful 404 page

The error page should return the 404 status code and still be helpful: search, the most important sections, contact. Important: it must not respond with status 200 – otherwise Google will treat it as a real page.

QR codes as an early warning system

Printed codes are often the last to be noticed after a relaunch. Same-QR checks the targets of your codes every night. If a page returns a 404 or 410 error, you receive an email with suggestions for the new target—the printed code remains, only the target is adjusted.

Frequently asked questions