No Search Results Found - Should this return status code 404?
-
A question came up today on how to correctly serve the right status code on pages where no search results are found.
I did a couple searches on some major eccomerce and news sites and they were ALL serving status code 200 for No Search Results Found
http://www.zappos.com/dsfasdgasdgadsg
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dfjakljgdkslagklasd&_sacat=0
http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=sdgadgdsagas&x=0&y=0&primaryType=mixed&sortBy=date&intl=false
http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=sdagasdgasdgasg
I thought I read somewhere were it was recommended to serve a status code 404 on these types of pages. Based on what I found above, all sites were serving a 200, so it appears this may not be the best practice.
Any thoughts?
-
Hi,
Those sites are correctly serving a 200 page.
Think of it this way - if you were searching for 'sdagasdgasdgasg' in SEOmoz (as in above URL), this term is not found yet on any page on site. But, it may be contained on a page that is published in the future (highly unlikely for that term I know, but you get what I mean). Hence they serve a 200 page.
In terms of usability, if you were on a site and you searched for something and were presented with a generic 404 page, you'd probably think that something had gone amiss with the search functionality. However, if you were presented with a 200 page with "Sorry, no results found" you would be more likely to assume the search functionality had in fact worked, there was just nothing to return.
-
404 would make sense only if we were referring to what you were searching for. Basically 404 says this page is not found, but could be found again later...
In this sense we are talking about the webpage not the product being searched for, which is what response codes are all about. So a 200 response would be correct, the page is there, the results are null.
Does that make sense?
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
-
Hi anyone please help I use this code but now getting 404 error. please help.
#index redirect
Technical SEO | | roynguyen
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.html\ HTTP/
RewriteRule ^index.html$ http://domain.com/ [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} .html
RewriteRule ^(.*).html$ /$1 [R=301,L] hi anyone please help I use this code but now getting 404 error. please help. homepage and service.html page is working, but the rest pages like about.html, servicearea.html, and contact.html is not working showing 404 error. and also when you type this URL. generalapplianceserice.ca/about.html generalapplianceserice.ca/contact.html generalapplianceserice.ca/servicearea.html it automatically remove the .HTML extension and shows 404 error, the pages name in root directory is same. these pages work like generalapplianceservice.ca and generalapplianceservice.ca/services why? i also remove this code again but still same issue.0 -
Sitelink search in google search for Brand name redirect me to 404, how?
Hi All, When I search my brand name in google and in google search result my site appears with sitelink and in site link there is option of search when I search any keyword in that search then that search redirect me to 404 page of my site. I found I have implemented wrong schema at category page for search action and then I fixed the bug but 5 days passed away still google showing 404 of my search action. I have not implemented schema for search action at homepage. Now please let me know what is the issue?
Technical SEO | | amu1230 -
No related searches
Does anyone have any insight as to why a site wouldn't show any results when using this google search operator:
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer8
related:site.com There are no results appearing. We recently moved from .com to .org with 301 redirects in place and change of address tool submitted. There are no penalties or warnings in search console but we have seen a significant decrease in search traffic. Thanks in advance.0 -
Does mobile usability issues reduce your ranking in desktop search results?
Google has been sending emails out about usability errors. Do they have an effect on the rankings for desktop search results?
Technical SEO | | navidash0 -
Screaming Frog showing 503 status code. Why?
Screaming Frog is showing a 503 code for images. If I go and use a header checker like SEOBook it shows 200. Why would that be? Here is an example link- http://germanhausbarn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/36-UPC-5145536-John-Deere-Stoneware-Logo-Mug-pair-25.00-Heavy-4-mugs-470x483.jpg
Technical SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Server return 404 and 200 status
Dear All,
Technical SEO | | omverma
We have a website where we are showing some products. Many times it happens when we remove any product and add that again later. In our site, we have product list page and detail page. So if any product get deleted and client hits the detail page with deleted product url, then we are returning 404. Next time when that product will be available our server will return 200. I have two questions : 1. Is is right way to deal with deleted product ? 2. After deploying it, we observed that our keywords ranking is going down, is that really affect ? Thanks,
Om0 -
Skip indexing the search pages
Hi, I want all such search pages skipped from indexing www.somesite.com/search/node/ So i have this in robots.txt (Disallow: /search/) Now any posts that start with search are being blocked and in Google i see this message A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more. How can i handle this and also how can i find all URL's that Google is blocking from showing Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Will duplicate content on ecommerce cause harm in search results?
First off, SEO learner, not a professional, therefore question is not for any client. A new (less 1 yr) ecommerce site in a particular sector is now moving into partnership with relevant websites to be their online store. A 'store' link on the partner site will redirect to the ecommerce domain to a dedicated area (on a domain/directory path) with the partner's branding. To do this though means duplicating the entire catalogue for each partner that comes on board for this scheme. So the original ecommercesite.com/categories also delivers ecommercesite.com/partner1/categories (with partner's brand identity) ecommercesite.com/partner2/categories (with partner's brand identity) and so on Won't duplicating the product catalogue in directories cause problems in delivering effective SERPs for the original ecommerce site?
Technical SEO | | BeIntermedia0