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Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Your visitors may stumble into a
404 "Not found"
page on your website for a variety of reasons:
A mistyped URL, or a copy-and-paste mistake
Broken or truncated links on web pages or in an email message
Moved or deleted content
Confronted by a 404 page, they may then attempt to manually correct the URL, click
the back button, or even navigate away from your site. As hinted in an
earlier post
for
"404 week at Webmaster Central",
there are various ways to help your visitors get out of the dead-end situation. In our quest to
make 404 pages more useful, we've just added a section in
Webmaster Tools
called "Enhance 404 pages". If you've created a
custom 404 page
this allows you to embed a widget in your 404 page that helps your visitors find what
they're looking for by providing suggestions based on the incorrect URL.
Example: Jamie receives the link www.example.com/activities/adventurecruise.html
in an email message. Because of formatting due to a bad email client, the URL is truncated to
www.example.com/activities/adventur. As a result it returns a 404 page.
With the 404 widget added, however, she could instead see the following:
In addition to attempting to correct the URL, the 404 widget also suggests the
following, if available:
a link to the parent subdirectory
a sitemap webpage
site search query suggestions and search box
How do you add the widget? Visit the "Enhance 404 pages" section in Webmaster Tools,
which allows you to generate a JavaScript snippet. You can then copy and paste this into your
custom 404 page's code. As always, don't forget to
return a proper 404 code.
Can you change the way it looks? Sure. We leave the HTML unstyled initially, but you can edit the
CSS block that we've included. For more information, check out our
guide on how to customize the look of your 404 widget.
This feature is currently experimental—we might not provide corrections and suggestions for
your site but we'll be working to improve the coverage. In the meantime, let us know what you
think in the comments below or in our
group discussion.
Thanks for helping us make the Internet a more friendly place!
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eWebsite visitors encounter 404 errors due to various reasons, including mistyped URLs, broken links, or deleted content.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle Webmaster Tools offers a widget to enhance custom 404 pages, providing suggestions to help visitors find the desired content.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe 404 widget can suggest corrections to the URL, link to parent directories, offer a sitemap, and provide site search options.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eWebmasters can customize the appearance of the 404 widget using CSS, and this feature is currently experimental with ongoing improvements.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Webmaster Tools added an \"Enhance `404` pages\" section to help visitors encountering `404` errors. This feature lets users embed a widget in custom `404` pages, providing suggestions to help find the correct content. The widget attempts to correct URLs and offers links to the parent subdirectory, a sitemap, and site search suggestions. Users can add this widget via a generated JavaScript snippet from Webmaster Tools and customize its appearance with CSS.\n"],null,["# Make your 404 pages more useful\n\nTuesday, August 19, 2008\n| It's been a while since we published this blog post. Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore).\n\n\nYour visitors may stumble into a\n[`404` \"Not found\"](https://google.com/not-very+found)\npage on your website for a variety of reasons:\n\n- A mistyped URL, or a copy-and-paste mistake\n- Broken or truncated links on web pages or in an email message\n- Moved or deleted content\n\n\nConfronted by a `404` page, they may then attempt to manually correct the URL, click\nthe back button, or even navigate away from your site. As hinted in an\n[earlier post](/search/blog/2008/08/farewell-to-soft-404s)\nfor\n[\"`404` week at Webmaster Central\"](/search/blog/2008/08/its-404-week-at-webmaster-central),\nthere are various ways to help your visitors get out of the dead-end situation. In our quest to\nmake `404` pages more useful, we've just added a section in\n[Webmaster Tools](https://search.google.com/search-console)\ncalled \"Enhance `404` pages\". If you've created a\n[custom `404` page](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/http-network-errors#pagegone)\nthis allows you to embed a widget in your `404` page that helps your visitors find what\nthey're looking for by providing suggestions based on the incorrect URL.\n\n\nExample: Jamie receives the link `www.example.com/activities/adventurecruise.html`\nin an email message. Because of formatting due to a bad email client, the URL is truncated to\n`www.example.com/activities/adventur`. As a result it returns a `404` page.\nWith the `404` widget added, however, she could instead see the following:\n\n\nIn addition to attempting to correct the URL, the `404` widget also suggests the\nfollowing, if available:\n\n- a link to the parent subdirectory\n- a sitemap webpage\n- site search query suggestions and search box\n\n\nHow do you add the widget? Visit the \"Enhance `404` pages\" section in Webmaster Tools,\nwhich allows you to generate a JavaScript snippet. You can then copy and paste this into your\ncustom `404` page's code. As always, don't forget to\n[return a proper `404` code](/search/blog/2008/08/farewell-to-soft-404s).\n\n\nCan you change the way it looks? Sure. We leave the HTML unstyled initially, but you can edit the\nCSS block that we've included. For more information, check out our\n[guide on how to customize the look of your `404` widget](https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=100044&hl=en).\n\n\nThis feature is currently experimental---we might not provide corrections and suggestions for\nyour site but we'll be working to improve the coverage. In the meantime, let us know what you\nthink in the comments below or in our\n[group discussion](https://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/8043e56a67baa401#).\nThanks for helping us make the Internet a more friendly place!\n\nWritten by Sahala Swenson, Webmaster Tools team"]]
