Hi, how important is a correct 404 status code for non existing sites for google? Or may it be better to redirect such sites with help of 302/ 301 to the home of the domain? What do you think? Regards from Germany, Markus
You should always have a correct 404 response when pages are not found... otherwise you can end up with 1000s of trash pages being indexed and then suffering duplicate content. You can customise the 404 page so that it becomes more useful - as long as it still sends the 404 header response correctly. There are other implications for not returning a 404 status when a page isn't found, but I am not aware of them right now. I did look into it over 1 year ago, I just can't remember all the reasons why you should have a correct 404 status page at the minute.
Thanks Ganceann. Well, i also think you need a good made 404 error page, maybe some links on it to the home or to the sitemap. Are there other positions to that topic?
If you have a sitesearch facility... you could include that on the 404 page so users can search the site etc. Always have a link to the homepage or some links to useful pages (like a sitemap or something)... so that users have options when they encounter a 404 page not found
Yes i see, you have to provide some links on your error page, so the user can easily navigate on your domain. I switched my site, so that i have the status code 404, no redirect anymore.