Google Webmaster Tools Shows Problems with Soft 404 Errors Post: 303034634

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The Lounge What is on Your Mind? Google Webmaster Tools Shows Problems with Soft 404 Errors Post 303034634 by jim mcnamara on Wednesday 1st of May 2019 10:38:07 AM

05-01-2019

Registered User

I'm sure Neo knows this:

Soft 404 are not actual defined errors. They are usually caused by thin content - examples: an URL that finds a useless error message, or a basically empty page. Or the in the case of case of forums only: no posted response. Automatic generation of Wordpress tags when someone looks for something new and non-existent, is an example of the "oops page". Apparently soft 404 a is a googlebot response, not a real error. But you get dinged anyway.

The basic idea is:
I do a search on the the word 'furkle' - UNIX.com returns a 200, with a page saying 'Oops'. Sort of like 'dangling URLs'. Googlebot then has the smarts to see that this is a thin page. For forums only when googlebot sees a question with with zero replies - i.e, possibly lots of views - but no posted answers this situation generates this kind of response. You also get this when someone writes a nice piece, but nobody answers it, even though it is high content, "likes" do not count.

I helped clean up literally thousands really old posts on a science site - for the very reason I mentioned above, per the site owner. The discussion sub-forum had about 1500 posts we removed, for example. Humans had to go in on zero reply posts, and do one of:
1. delete the post
2. add a small bit of content like a link to some relevant comment or a link to external/internal page
3. flag the post for someone else who knows the stuff required. Because the post has some merit.

For Neo:
Do we have a way to create tracking the original source of possible airball URL requests? Please share if you do.
How is our zero reply problem?
I can only play with ordering by view count on a given forum:
https://www.unix.com/programming/?or...ort=replycount
Lots of zero replies. Do not know if this is bad or not.

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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

gdal2tiles

gdal2tiles(1)						      General Commands Manual						     gdal2tiles(1)

NAME

       gdal2tiles - gdal2tiles.py generates directory with TMS tiles, KMLs and simple web viewers

SYNOPSIS

       gdal2tiles.py [-title "Title"] [-publishurl http://yourserver/dir/]
		     [-nogooglemaps] [-noopenlayers] [-nokml]
		     [-googlemapskey KEY] [-forcekml] [-v]
		     input_file [output_dir]

DESCRIPTION

       This utility generates a directory with small tiles and metadata, following OSGeo Tile Map Service Specification. Simple web pages with
       viewers based on Google Maps and OpenLayers are generated as well - so anybody can comfortably explore your maps on-line and you do not
       need to install or configure any special software (like mapserver) and the map displays very fast in the webbrowser. You only need to
       upload generated directory into a web server.

       GDAL2Tiles creates also necessary metadata for Google Earth (KML SuperOverlay), in case the supplied map uses EPSG:4326 projection.

       World files and embedded georeference is used during tile generation, but you can publish a picture without proper georeference too.

       -p PROFILE, --profile=PROFILE:
	   Tile cutting profile (mercator,geodetic,raster) - default 'mercator' (Google Maps compatible).

       -r RESAMPLING, --resampling=RESAMPLING:
	   Resampling method (average,near,bilinear,cubic,cubicspline,lanczos,antialias) - default 'average'.

       -s SRS, --s_srs=SRS:
	   The spatial reference system used for the source input data.

       -z ZOOM, --zoom=ZOOM:
	   Zoom levels to render (format:'2-5' or '10').

       -e, --resume:
	   Resume mode. Generate only missing files.

       -a NODATA, --srcnodata=NODATA:
	   NODATA transparency value to assign to the input data.

       -v, --verbose
	   Generate verbose output of tile generation.

       -h, --help
	   Show help message and exit.

       --version
	   Show program's version number and exit.

       KML (Google Earth) options:

       Options for generated Google Earth SuperOverlay metadata

       -k, --force-kml
	   Generate KML for Google Earth - default for 'geodetic' profile and 'raster' in EPSG:4326. For a dataset with different projection use
	   with caution!

       -n, --no-kml:
	   Avoid automatic generation of KML files for EPSG:4326.

       -u URL, --url=URL:
	   URL address where the generated tiles are going to be published.

       Web viewer options:

       Options for generated HTML viewers a la Google Maps

       -w WEBVIEWER, --webviewer=WEBVIEWER:
	   Web viewer to generate (all,google,openlayers,none) - default 'all'.

       -t TITLE, --title=TITLE:
	   Title of the map.

       -c COPYRIGHT, --copyright=COPYRIGHT:
	   Copyright for the map.

       -g GOOGLEKEY, --googlekey=GOOGLEKEY:
	   Google Maps API key from http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html.

       -y YAHOOKEY, --yahookey=YAHOOKEY:
	   Yahoo Application ID from http://developer.yahoo.com/wsregapp/.

       NOTE: gdal2tiles.py is a Python script that needs to be run against 'new generation' Python GDAL binding.

AUTHORS

       Klokan Petr Pridal klokan@klokan.cz as a Google SoC 2007 Project.

GDAL
								  Tue Sep 18 2012						     gdal2tiles(1)