Custom Error and page not found responses
-
When there is a 500 Internal Server Error, is it better to return an HTTP 500 response and custom error page from the requested URL, or is it better to return a 302 redirect? The redirect would send the browser to the custom error page, which would return the HTTP 500 result.
We tell Google not to index or follow our error pages, so if Google sees an error at a URL, we don't necessarily want Google to think that the URL should be ignored. That's why the alternative would be to redirect to a custom error page with it's own URL.
Similarly, what's the best approach if the response is a 404? Return HTTP 404 and custom 404 page from the requested URL, or redirect?
Thanks.
-
Just to add to Ryan's comments - if you had massive 500 issues, then you might theoretically argue that 301'ing would keep Google from crawling so many errors. At best, though, it's a band-aid, and maybe even a poor-fitting one. The better question is - why are those 500s occurring. Ultimately, they should be fixed, not patched.
Usually, Google isn't going to penalize a one-time 500 error or a short-term server problem. The only time I could see 301'ing is if you knew you had a major problem and couldn't fix it for a few days. The 301 (or possibly 302, in this case) could buffer you from crawl problems while you made the fixes. Obviously, that wouldn't be an ideal situation.
-
I have often though about this but have never really come to a answer.
If you 301 or 302 a page to a 404 error page and then return a 404, what are you telling the search engine. are you telling them that the erorr page does not exist, not the origianl page.I have always done just that, it was only recently that when wondering why goolge has not dropped pages from the index, that I had a good think about it. If you dont do anythiong and use the default ugly error page, it give a 404, rather than a 302 then a 404.
is this what gogole was talking about when they came up with soft 404 errors in WMT?
I did set up a test where i did both in 2 sites but i did not follow up on the test. -
The header response code chosen is important. I cannot think of any reason why you would choose to provide a 500 response code other then when your server naturally offers that response.
A 301 code should only be returned if you actually 301 the URL to the proper target. This code sends a message to search engines saying "hey, update the URL in your index to this new URL".
A 404 code should be returned if the content is no longer offered on your site and will not be offered. Actually, a 410 response "Gone" means the content is permanently gone and wont return. This tells search engines they should definitively remove the link. A 404 code tells search engines the content is not presently available. It may be a temporary issue which can later be resolved. When a search engine repeatedly finds a 404 error, they will then take action and remove the link.
-
Thanks for the replies.
I'm not sure I stated my question clearly. What I was wondering, was whether it is better to return status code 500 from the requested url, or status code 301 from the requested url. So in one case, the actual url content would be the error page, and in the other case it would redirect to the error page.
I'm not even sure if there is a difference, but if there is I'd like to learn more.
Thanks.
-
The best approach for a 404 error varies. If you know what the user was looking for and you have that content or similar content available, you should 301 redirect the user to the appropriate page on your site. For example, if you have a page on "Top 10 Christmas Gifts for 2010", if you delete that page you likely should perform a 301 redirect to your "Top 10 Christmas Gifts for 2011" page if it is available.
If you don't have a similar page available on your site, let the URL 404. Ensure your 404 page is helpful. It should have a basic "oh no, we lost your page" message along with your site's normal navigation and a search box. 404 errors are a natural part of the internet. In small numbers they are perfectly fine. Also, ensure your site's links are all valid. You can't control whether an external link leads to a 404 error but none of your internal links should cause a 404 error.
With respect to a 500 error, those are not common (at least compared to 404s). Something on your server is not configured correctly. You should have an error log and investigate the root cause of any 5xx errors. Find the source of the error and take action to fix it.
-
A 404 error means "not found". This is usually the page you get when you make a mistake spelling page name in a site, or if the page is deleted or moved. The problem is that the standard 404 page is ugly and unhelpful.
Many people have figured out that if you use a custom 404 page you can present a much more helpful page to you visitors. Others have taken it a step further and made that custom page a redirect to the home page, so that any links (and PR) pointing to pages that have been deleted (or misspelled) will be passed on to the website.
Hope this helps
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My last site crawl shows over 700 404 errors all with void(0 added to the ends of my posts/pages.
Hello, My last site crawl shows over 700 404 errors all with void(0 added to the ends of my posts/pages. I have contacted my theme company but not sure what could have done this. Any ideas? The original posts/pages are still correct and working it just looks like it did duplicates and added void(0 to the end of each post/page. Questions: There is no way to undo this correct? Do I have to do a redirect on each of these? Will this hurt my rankings and domain authority? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Wade
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neverenoughmusic.com0 -
Recommend Layout Page (home, categories or section, individual page)
Hello Could you please share with me your advice and recommendations on how to design a SEO layout (H1, Image, body text, etc). I need to give instructions to our website designer. I would like to see some examples. We are going to work with wordpress and visual composer. I really appreciate your help and time Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GHSCostaRica0 -
Duplicate Pages #!
Hi guys, Currently have duplicate pages accross a website e.g. https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart**#!** https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart The only difference is the URL 1 has a hashtag and exclamation tag. Everything else is the same. We were thinking of adding rel canonical tags on the #! versions of the page to the correct URLs. But Google doens't seem to be indexing the #! versions anyway. Does anyone know why this is the case? If Google is not indexing them, is there any point adding rel canonical tags? Cheers, Chris https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart#!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
NoIndex Purchase Page
We ran a ScreamingFrog report of one of our websites and found that there are thousands of instances of a single page with a different URL parameter, for example: purchase.cfm?id=1234
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ErnieB
purchase.cfm?id=1235
purchase.cfm?id=1236
purchase.cfm?id=1237 and we do not need purchase.cfm to be indexed for any reason as there is practically no content on that page to begin with, but it's just part of the purchase steps in our website. What is the best way to deal with this for Google & SEO? Should we do a Meta NoIndex of this purchase.cfm page? Thank you.0 -
2 pages lost page rank and not showing any backlinks in google
Hi we have a business/service related website, 2 of our main pages lost their page rank from 3 to 0 and are not showing any backlinks in google. What could be the possible reason. Please guide me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tech_Ahead0 -
Why do pages with a 404 error drop out of webmaster tools only to reappear again?
I have noticed a lot of pages which have fallen out of webmaster tools crawl error log that had bee 404'ing are reappearing again Any suggestions as to why this might be the case? How can I make sure they don't reappear again?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus0 -
Cleaning bad pages
We have 10,000 of bad pages, which panda could track and penalize us for that. If we delete them we will get 404 error, and after that we could again get penality from G algo. How can i delete them to follow google rules and avoid penalities? If we make redirect of 10k pages with 301 to index, can 10k old pages be treated as duplicate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
Recovering from Programmers Error
Hey Everybody! Last year one of my bigger sites hit a snaffu. I was getting about 300k + hits a day from google, and then, when a developper released an update with a robots.txt file that basically blocked google from the entire site. We didn't notice the bug until a few days later, but by then, it was already too late. My google traffic dropped to 30k a day and I've been having the hardest time coming back ever since. As a matter of fact, hundreds of sites that were aggregating my content started outranking me for my own terms. For over a year, I've been working on building what I lost back and everything seemed to be coming together. I was back at 100k+ hits a day Until today... My developpers repeated the exact same error as last year. They blocked google from crawling my site for over 5 days and now I'm down to 10k se hits a day. My question : Has anyone encountered this problem before and what did you do to come back?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CrakJason0