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  1. #1

    404 page and search engine

    Rather than giving the standard 404 I thought I'll filled up my 404 pages with content.

    For example, I could do:

    ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

    However, how would search engine see it? Will search engine "know" that the page is really just a 404 page?

    If so, how do I prevent search engine from knowing that?

    How do wordpress permalink do it?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Castle Pines, CO
    Posts
    7,189
    .htaccess Tutorial - Error Messages - it seems that is the correct way. The SEs should know it is a 404 error page because you have designated it as such.

    I have had to use
    Code:
    <%
    Response.Status = 404
    %>
    in some of my ASP pages for Google to be happy with the sitemaps though

  3. #3
    What should I do so I get the same effect with ErrorDocument 404 but with search engine never knows that it is a 404 error.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2003
    Location
    Castle Pines, CO
    Posts
    7,189
    From what I can remember - you want the search engines to know and understand the 404 error. Why wouldn't you?

  5. #5
    Say I have 120 articles. If all 404 pages become excerpts of related articles, I would have millions of web page as oppose to only 120.

    Maybe it'll have a slight advantage in searchengine war.

  6. #6
    can anyone say me wot will be the actual code in .htaccess.txt for displaying customized error pages
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  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Posts
    31
    Quote Originally Posted by smilemaker
    can anyone say me wot will be the actual code in .htaccess.txt for displaying customized error pages
    First off, although it's a common mistake, it's not .htaccess.txt , it's just .htaccess without any file extension as .htaccess actually is a file extension. To answer your question, open your .htaccess file, and insert
    Code:
    ErrorDocument 404 /YOUR 404 PAGE.html
    at the top.
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  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by hardjoko
    Rather than giving the standard 404 I thought I'll filled up my 404 pages with content.

    For example, I could do:

    ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

    However, how would search engine see it? Will search engine "know" that the page is really just a 404 page?

    If so, how do I prevent search engine from knowing that?

    How do wordpress permalink do it?
    The search engine will see it as 404, because the server will send HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found in the header. It doesnt matter if you have a custom error page or not, it will send the 404 header.

    To prevent it, you can send status HTTP/1.1 200 OK.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Chennai , India
    Posts
    4,632
    robots.txt file would be able to restrict the searchengine activitiy in your site , this file would tell what to be indexed and what not to be.

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