More on 404

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 Some of the information may be outdated (for example, some images may be missing, and some links may not work anymore).

Friday, August 15, 2008

Now that we've bid farewell to soft 404 errors, in this post for 404 week we'll answer your burning 404 questions.

How do you treat the response code 410 "Gone"? Just like a 404.

Do you index content or follow links from a page with a 404 response code?

We aim to understand as much as possible about your site and its content. So while we wouldn't want to show a hard 404 to users in search results, we may utilize a 404 error page's content or links if it's detected as a signal to help us better understand your site.

Keep in mind that if you want links crawled or content indexed, it's far more beneficial to include them in a page that's not 404.

What about 404 errors with a 10-second meta refresh?

Yahoo! currently utilizes this method on their 404 errors. They respond with a 404, but the 404 content also shows: <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10;url=https://www.yahoo.com/?xxx" />. We feel this technique is fine because it reduces confusion by giving users 10 seconds to make a new selection, only offering the home page after 10 seconds without the user's input.

Should I 301 redirect misspelled 404 errors to the correct URL?

Redirecting with 301 status 404 errors is a good idea when it's helpful to users (that is, not confusing like soft 404 errors). For instance, if you notice that the Crawl Errors of Webmaster Tools shows a 404 for a misspelled version of your URL, you can 301 the misspelled version of the URL to the correct version.

For example, if we saw this 404 in Crawl Errors:

https://www.google.com/webmsters <-- typo for "webmasters"

we may first correct the typo if it exists on our own site, then 301 the URL to the correct version (as the broken link may occur elsewhere on the web):

https://www.google.com/webmasters

Have you seen any good 404 errors?

Yes, we have! (Confession: no one asked us this question, but few things are as fun to discuss as response codes. :) We've put together a list of some of our favorite 404 pages. If you have more 404 related questions, let us know, and thanks for joining us for 404 week!

https://www.metrokitchen.com/nice-404-page: "If you're looking for an item that's no longer stocked (as I was), this makes it really easy to find an alternative."
- Riona, domestigeek

https://www.comedycentral.com/another-404: "Blame the robot monkeys"
- Reid, tells really bad jokes

https://www.splicemusic.com/and-another: "Boost your 'Time on site' metrics with a 404 page like this."
- Susan, dabbler in music and Analytics

https://www.treachery.net/wow-more-404s: "It's not reassuring, but it's definitive."
- Jonathan, has trained actual spiders to build websites, ants handle the 404 errors

https://www.apple.com/iPhone4g: "Good with respect to usability."
https://thcnet.net/lost-in-a-forest: "At least there's a mailbox."
- JohnMu, adventurous

https://lookitsme.co.uk/404: "It's pretty cute. :)"
- Jessica, likes cute things

https://www.orangecoat.com/a-404-page.html: "Flow charts rule."
- Sahala, internet traveller

https://icanhascheezburger.com/iz-404-page: "I can has useful links and even e-mail address for questions! But they could have added 'OH NOES! IZ MISSING PAGE! MAYBE TIPO OR BROKN LINKZ?' so folks'd know what's up."
- Adam, lindy hop geek

Written by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead