and more to the point, how to fix it? how can I stop this from happening? It resolves to "300 multiple chioces" but it should resolve directly to my "404 page" as that url no longer exists. How can I stop the server from looking for similar pages names? thanks James.
You've got a custom 404 page on your server that is doing this. And you're right, it's not working correctly (though not for the reasons you're thinking of). The custom 404 is typically handled in apache, you'll see a line like this in your config file: ErrorDocument 404 404.html If you're on a shared hosting plan you'll need to talk to whoever administers your servers. But! The real problem is that they've screwed up the 404 page - the search engines will see this error page as a real document not a 'not found'. Here's the headers for that page: HTTP/1.1 302 Found => Date => Fri, 01 Sep 2006 13:35:05 GMT Server => Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) Location => http://www.justoneuk.com/404.html Connection => close Content-Type => text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 Which means when it doesn't find a page it's producing the 404 page but the page headers are showing as 'found'. You (or whoever is outputing the page) should ensure that the page headers for 404's actually show a 404 header. It's OK to show custom content - even though it seems you don't want to - but the page headers shouldn't be saying that it actually found the page - Google pays attention to this. In short: - either change the 404.html file or have your hosting company do it, so that it displays the message you want. - make sure that the headers show 404, not 302
hi Wheel, thanks for your reply. When you say "either change the 404.html file" what do you mean? where about do I change it?..what do I need to put/where ? where are these HTTP/1.1 302 Found => headers that you can see.. i cant see them. James.
ok, i have removed 12 key pages and remade 75K hyperlinks.. now the url's that don't exist any more all resolve to a 404.html page.... i just can't figure what is wrong with that 404 page? I set it up as per instructions, do you think i would be better off without it? and just go to a server error page instead? tia... James.
Two things. First, in apache (this is at the server level) there's a setting that tells the server what error page to show if it can't find a page. In most cases this is an ugly 404 error page, but in your case this has been set to be a custom 404 error page. That custom page can show whatever you like. This setup is actually fine - instead of a 404 error page it's a good idea to show a sitemap or something...whatever works for your site. Secondly, and seperately, for each page served by apache there are 'page headers' that typically a visitor doesn't see (but Google and the other SE's do look at it). You can override the default page header through programming. If you google 'page headers check' you'll find online tools that will reveal these page headers to you. When a page is not found, the 404 error page is displayed. The page headers for that page should match this error code - by displaying a 404 page header. In your case I checked the page header, and the 404 error page wasn't showing a 404 page header. It was showing a 302 or a 305. So you've got an error page that says page not found, but a page header saying the page is fine. So the SE's see your error page as actually being a perfectly valid page.My expectation is that somehow your hosting company is doing this - it's something that can easily be overlooked; I've done it myself. In short, there's two parts to a page; the page header and the page content itself. For a page not found, the page headers should be 404 and the content should be something to do with page not found. In your case for simplicity's sake, use the standard or default or server 404 error page. Then find a page header check tool online to check a URL on your site that doesn't exist and make sure the page header shows a 404. If it doesn't show a 404, contact your hosting company to fix it. Does that make sense?
thatnks wheel, I think i have fixed it???????????? The 404 page, instead of coming up "found".. it shows "OK" all the dead pages are now going to the 404 instead of the 300 choices page. does it look right now? Thanks in adv.... James