If you've noticed a sudden spike in pages returning 404 errors or marked as "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user" in your Google Search Console during the first half of 2024, you might be alarmed. But rest assured, there's no need to panic or take drastic action.
What Are /1000 URLs?
These URLs, with /1000 appended to the end, result from spam sites linking to your pages aggressively to attract traffic to their website, as spam sites do. Recently, the tactic from these spam sites has been to append target URLs with ‘/1000’. This leads to many URLs with /1000s showing up in the "Pages returning 404s" section of your Google Search Console indexing report, as these URLs with the appended ‘/1000’ likely do not exist on your website.
Expert Opinion
John Mueller, a Senior Search Analyst at Google, has addressed this phenomenon:
"You can just ignore these. There's absolutely nothing you need to do about them. They have no negative (or positive!) effect on your site's SEO."
He further clarified:
No need to redirect: Google has expressed that 404 errors such as these will not negatively impact your website's performance in search results or in any other way.
No need to disavow: Disavowing these URLs does nothing to harm or help your website, and attempting to disavow each /1000 URL would be a waste of time.
Managing Your Indexing Report
While these URLs won't harm your SEO, they can clutter your indexation report. One way to prevent this issue is to block Google from crawling these spam sites and referring URLs by adding specific directives to your robots.txt file. In WordPress, you can access this file via your SEO plugin.
Additional Resources
Don't let these /1000 URLs stress you out. Focus on creating great content and following best SEO practices, and your site will continue to perform well in search results. For more detailed information, you can visit the following resources:
Google Support Thread on /1000 URLs
Search Engine Roundtable on Google Search Console 404 Errors
Reddit SEO Discussion on Spammy URLs
By following the advice from industry experts and staying informed, you can maintain your website's health and focus on what truly matters: providing valuable content to your audience.
In conclusion, there is nothing to worry about, These /1000’s will not affect your website's SEO efforts and disavowing these URLs would do nothing to harm or help your website, so attempting to disavow each /1000 URL would be a waste of time.
If you're still worried about how this might impact your website or rankings, book a call with us. We can provide expert guidance and support to address your concerns and improve your site's performance.
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