How to fix 404 Pages

GSC showing many 404 pages.

[King of Snakes]

There are numerous 404 pages on our site due to the removal of many pages during the redesign, as those pages are no longer relevant. Many of these pages have backlinks from spam sites, and we are unable to request their removal.

The Google Search Console (GSC) report are showing all these pages under 404 issue. We have attempted to validate the fixes in GSC twice, but both attempts were unsuccessful, resulting in "Some fixes failed for Page indexing issues."

Do you have any suggestions on how to address this?

[not2easy]

If you have updated your sitemaps to remove the missing pages, just submit the new sitemaps in GSC and Google will quit noticing them eventually. Any site changes will take time for Google to digest, you can ignore the 404 errors shown in GSC if you know why there are 404s. A 404 error is not an error when it is intentional.

404 is a server response, it is not an actual error like a broken link that can be fixed and then validated. Backlinks from spam sites can be safely ignored if you did not create them.

[lucy24]

If you intentionally removed the pages, you should be returning a 410 response. This has to be done manually; it isn’t auto-generated by the server like a 404. And, because it’s done manually, G### will know that the pages are really gone, and will stop crawling sooner. You can then ignore any future GSC complaints.

It probably goes without saying that you should fine-tooth-comb the site and make sure you have no overlooked links to these nonexistent pages.

[not2easy]

@lucy24 - From a previous post today: [webmasterworld.com...] we know this is a WP site so 410 is out unless manually done in .htaccess, a skillset not apparent here.