Soft 404 Errors and Mobile Blocking Question

[caravan]

Hi, I have a couple of questions.

Firstly, I'm working on a site that has been gradually getting a lot of soft 404 errors on Google Webmaster Tools. Looking at these pages they point to search result pages that no longer return results or products that no longer exist.

What is the best way to remove these? Should I get the page to return a definate 404 in the header instead of a 200 code and a message saying no results found? Should I be concerned about them from a search engine point of view.

My second question is sort of related to these results. Most of the 404's are coming from a new mobile version of the site that has been added in a /mobile/ directory. Would it be an idea for me to block the mobile directory in the robots.txt file to avoid any duplicate content issues? If someone lands on the site from a mobile they are redirected to the mobile version of the page.

[Adrian98]

Hi, I have a couple of questions.

Firstly, I'm working on a site that has been gradually getting a lot of soft 404 errors on Google Webmaster Tools. Looking at these pages they point to search result pages that no longer return results or products that no longer exist.

What is the best way to remove these? Should I get the page to return a definate 404 in the header instead of a 200 code and a message saying no results found? Should I be concerned about them from a search engine point of view.

My second question is sort of related to these results. Most of the 404's are coming from a new mobile version of the site that has been added in a /mobile/ directory. Would it be an idea for me to block the mobile directory in the robots.txt file to avoid any duplicate content issues? If someone lands on the site from a mobile they are redirected to the mobile version of the page.

Hi,
This seoMOZ thread may help your problem! Thanks http://www.seomoz.org/q/soft-404-problem