Digsil 404 SEO Guardian

Digsil 404 SEO Guardian is more than a redirect manager. It is a decision assistant for broken URLs: it separates the few 404s that matter from the noise, and for each one it recommends the response Google’s documentation calls correct, a 301 to an equivalent page or a 410 Gone.

A typical 404 log is mostly junk: code fragments, missing script files, scanner probes. A typical fix is a blanket redirect to the homepage, which Google treats as a soft 404. This plugin is built to avoid both.

How it is different

• Junk is classified, not just logged. Each new 404 is checked against 19 patterns (code fragments, CSS selectors, minified-JS tokens, MIME types, script/style/font files, scanner probes, relative-link garbage under real posts and more). Junk goes to its own list with the reason shown, so real broken pages are not buried.
• Real pages are ranked by evidence. URLs that look like articles are listed first, ranked by signals: a deleted article, Googlebot hits, links from other sites.
• Deleted articles are caught before anyone hits them. When you trash, delete or unpublish a published post, its live URL is recorded at that moment, with its title, so you can decide what happens to it before Google or a visitor reaches a 404.
• Each URL gets a recommendation, not just a text box. One click on “Redirect” shows the same article at a new URL (same slug or a slug WordPress remembers as renamed), related articles and topic archives with a match score, or “410 Gone” when nothing equivalent exists.
• Targets are proven before a rule is saved. The target is checked with WordPress itself (posts, pages, custom post types, terms, authors, archives) and stored in its canonical form, so there are no redirects to missing pages and no trailing-slash chains.
• A working page can never be hijacked. Rules only act on URLs that currently return 404, and targets must be on your own site.

Features

• 404 log with a hit counter, a Googlebot hit counter and the referring page (no IP addresses, no user agents stored).
• Filters for likely real, other open, fixed, ignored and junk URLs, with search and sorting.
• Redirect loops are blocked and existing chains are flattened when a new rule is added.
• Homepage redirects are possible but need explicit confirmation.
• Manual redirect rules (301, 302, 410) in a separate Redirects screen.
• “SEO Guide” screen with the decision rules and links to Google Search Central.
• Modern admin interface with light, dark and automatic theme, fully responsive and keyboard accessible.
• Search Console import: upload the “Not found (404)” CSV from Google Search Console (nothing is connected to Google; the file is parsed in memory) so URLs Google already knows are broken rank first. A live check asks your own site what each URL returns now.
• Redirect health check: finds loops, chains, redirects to removed pages, homepage targets and rules that no longer run. One-click fixes; a local-only check also runs weekly.
• Export for server or CDN: nginx map rules, Apache RedirectMatch lines or a Cloudflare Bulk Redirects CSV. Entries that cannot be written safely are skipped, never guessed.
• Impact report: daily counters of served redirects and 410 responses for the last 30 days (no visitor data).
• Notice right after you trash or unpublish an article, with a direct link to choose its redirect.
• Automatic log retention cleanup and row caps that protect your database from scanner floods.

Privacy

The plugin stores the path of URLs that return 404, hit counters, daily redirect counters (kept for 90 days) and, optionally, the referring page without its query string. If you import a Search Console CSV, the URL paths, click and impression counts and last-crawl dates from that file are stored; the file itself is not kept. It does not store IP addresses, user agents or cookies, and it does not contact any external service (the live check only sends a request to your own site). A suggested text is added to Settings > Privacy.

Security

Capability checks (manage_options) and nonces on every action, prepared SQL statements, escaped output, sanitized input, same-host redirect targets, log size caps and automatic retention cleanup.