Dublicate URL & 404 not found: need assistance

[millerb7]

So when I do a site:mysite.com lookup, it finds all the pages I would imagine it would. Then at the bottom it says it omitted duplicate pages and when I click on that to view them, about 3 of my pages have a duplicate URL just with or without "/" at the end.

Also, in my spiders errors on webmaster tools, it returned two errors, both of which were with the URL listed above as 404 not found.

mysite.com/example could be one of my urls, then it's returning an error on mysite.com/example/

Any idea what that's about?

I'm using wordpress. Maybe it was indexed while I was messing around with things on wordpress and it indexed both pages? I'm almost positive there are not multiple pages but I could be wrong.

Any help is appreciated.

[paulgl]

It's no big deal in those cases.
Websites have those frequently.
Just do a custom 404 page, soft landing, not a stock error message.
People are not going to web searches the way you did for your
content.

Google readily handles cases like that. It's not a penalty or any
such rot. It's more on some annoying things that happen with urls.

404's happen. Can't get around them. For one, servers blink, so
expect some. Typos happen, yours and your potential visitors.

There is nothing nefarious about your site.

Just be consistent in how you write things when backlinking.

The more things you do right, the less effect little annoyances
like those will hurt. In fact, the will become a non-issue. They
already are, in reality.

paul

[BigDaddys101]

Just my two extra cents..

1. Yes 404's are almost always inevitable

2. Did you know you can get slapped with duplicate content just because google indexed www.domain.com and domain.com

yes its silly but I just had to fix a site with those types of errors

[millerb7]

Originally Posted by paulgl

It's no big deal in those cases.
Websites have those frequently.
Just do a custom 404 page, soft landing, not a stock error message.
People are not going to web searches the way you did for your
content.

Google readily handles cases like that. It's not a penalty or any
such rot. It's more on some annoying things that happen with urls.

404's happen. Can't get around them. For one, servers blink, so
expect some. Typos happen, yours and your potential visitors.

There is nothing nefarious about your site.

Just be consistent in how you write things when backlinking.

The more things you do right, the less effect little annoyances
like those will hurt. In fact, the will become a non-issue. They
already are, in reality.

paul

I appreciate the response. I figured it kind of just happens, was just trying to avoid any penalties, especially since my site is only about a month old and I'm not only using it to practice SEO, but its serving as a "How to" site for motorcycle mods for a lot (1000+) people I know from another few forums.

Didn't want to get any type of penalties haha. Thanks again!

Originally Posted by BigDaddys101

Just my two extra cents..

1. Yes 404's are almost always inevitable

2. Did you know you can get slapped with duplicate content just because google indexed www.domain.com and domain.com

yes its silly but I just had to fix a site with those types of errors

Yeah I had read that, I have domain.com set as my default with webmaster, I did add www and non-www version in there, and then had to set my default for google as the non-www version.

Only did this as I NEVER type in www when I enter addresses on browsers. Nobody I know does either... although I'm sure tons of folks do.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by BigDaddys101

Just my two extra cents..

1. Yes 404's are almost always inevitable

2. Did you know you can get slapped with duplicate content just because google indexed www.domain.com and domain.com

yes its silly but I just had to fix a site with those types of errors

You won't get slapped. Just that google will choose which one to show more
often. There's no duplicate content penalty with that. You can only get
a duplicate content "penalty," (as always) if you choose to use duplicate
content to tweak search engine results. Common things like those above
are not nefarious. It is a good practice to work on your main domain and
use a 301 redirect from www to non, or vice versa. But other things like
the "/" are just laying around waiting to happen and are not in and of themselves
bad. There's no duplicate content penalty for www and a non www either.
Google just has to make a split decision on what's better to show and when.
It's really no big deal. A coupe of years ago, Matt Cutts himself said he sees
no need to even do a 301 redirect. And don't remove either of them using
google's url removal tool. If they are both indexed, that's not a bad thing.
if you remove one, you remove what could be half your results.

Paul