Hi DP members, Our company’s websites are running on Windows Server ( Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET to be exact). For SEO purposes we have to change the URL’s and even has to redirect some URL’s in our windows server to other websites. As we did not have the full permission URL redirection in Windows server we were not able to redirect the URl’s not to Add a 404 error webpage. So we need to enable .htaccess file desperately. But windows server does not support .htaccess file. To counter this we researched and we found out one solution. We purchased and installed the ISAPI module in our server (http://www.helicontech.com/download-isapi_rewrite3.htm). This is a software that will enable the .htaccess in the windows based servers. So we were able to write the Url redirects and Error 404 webpages in the .htaccess file. That was working perfectly. But we now encounter a new Issue in our server.. Soft 404 Error.. I am writing this mail to seek a solution for fixing the Soft 404 Error in our Server. For those who does not know what is Soft 404 I am writing a small note for this, Hope this would help you understand the same and to advise me the strategies that I need to use in countering the same. ------------------------------------------------ What is Soft 404 Error ? Assuming you don’t having much Idea about Soft 404 Error. Else please discard this section and proceed to section below. Assume webpages “ABC.html†Exists on our server and XYZ.html does not exist in Server. Ideal condition 1. User request for Abc.html >> Server Response 200 OK >> Webpage is Send to requested users browser (This is the normal scenario always) 2. A webpage say xyz.html is requested >> XYZ.html not present >> Server responds Error 404. Might returns and not found webpage if it’s mentioned in htaccess file. (It denotes that the webpage is not present and provides some webpage mentioned in .htaccess our our server as ErrorDocument 404 /404.html. Where 404.html is a custom made webpage) You can check the Server Status either from http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/check-server-headers-tool/ or from http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/server-header.php ------------------------------------------------ But here in my case(soft 404 error), if a webpage XYZ.html(not existant webpage) is requested by user, Server should respond “Error 404†as this webpage is not there in server. But here in this case it responds 200 OK. Soft 404 is bad from an SEO point of view as it causes internal content duplication and even it causes the indexation of the requested webpage for Search engines. The old method of adding ErrorDocument 404 /misc/404.html will not work in Windows server. The htaccess method that works in windows servers are mentioned below RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule .? /404.htm [NC,L] This is working correctly and whenever a webpage that is not present is requested, its displaying the mentioned 404.htm webpage. But there is Soft 404 Error if an invalid webpage is requested by user. In the third line I even tried the complete URL, but that too did not worked. URL RewriteRule .? http://www.mysite.com/404.htm [NC,L] But that too did not worked in solving the Soft 404 in my server. Can anyone help me out. Your response is greatly appreciated … Thanks in Advance.