Sitemap & 404 page

I've created a custom 404 page and adding this line on the .htaccess file

however, after verifying the google sitemap I got this error msg

any ideas?

 

same thing happened to me. i didn't really understand the messages, but have guessed that i need to put 404 in the title of the error page. have asked programmers to do so but so far they haven't got around to it, so can't say if that was the problem.

anyone else make any sense of it?

 

I got the same problem, I can't get my sitemap verified because:

We've detected that your 404 (file not found) error page returns a status of 200 (OK) in the header.

My 404 page has the title: "Oops, 404 error" and google still doesn't get it so adding 404 to your title won't help.

 

what happens if you change "Oops, 404 error" for "404 error" or even just "404"?

 

if you are using php, try adding
<?
header("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found");
?>

at the top of your notfound.html page.

 

also works fine.

I've just removed the errordocument line on the htaccess for verifying and put it back again after it has verified and it works....

 

Thanks, that did the trick.

 

sometimes apache messes up the error codes when redirected to another page: the original was a 404 (not found), went looking for the notfound.html which it did (200 OK).

 

Do whatever you think to solve this problem, but remember:
Google don't like 404(not found) errors

 

This happens when the server finds the error page after changing it in the .htaccess

I understand you are trying to display the homepage while returning an error and you don't want to set a 404 on your homepage.....

I set the htaccess to redirect to (say) 404.php

inside 404.php I use...

<?
header("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found");
include("http://www.automapit.com/index.html");
exit;
?>

This sets the error as a true 404 and doesn't request a 'new' page... it simply includes the code from your homepage as output so it 'looks' like your homepage... while it is actually a page called 404.php

 

yeah i also find this trick quite relevant to bypass this annoying mistake