HTTP Status Bad Request - 404, but also, add a 400 HTTP Status in certain circumstances?
-
We currently have a custom 404 page set up for our clients, but the developer has it returning a HTTP 200 for the status code. Big no, no. I'm having that fixed right now.
My question is, currently, the custom 404 page is only returned for urls with the extension .aspx:
- For example : ilovepizza.com/pepperni.aspx would return a 404 page because the correct page is ilovepizza.com/pepperoni.aspx
Any other format of URL without the extension (example ilovepizza.com/thumbtack) does not trigger the custom 404 page we've created, but it does trigger a server error with a 404 HTTP status page. I want to change this so this type of error also triggers the custom 404 page because it's more user-friendly and would return them to the website.
My question: Is there any benefit to making the /thumbtack errors return the custom 404 page but with a 400 Bad Request HTTP Status?
Kind of a novice here in those aspects, but does the 400 Bad Request status indicate that it was a user mistake and not a mistake created on the website?
Other suggestions?
-
Unfortunately I don't have experience with that.
-
Hi Scott,
Thanks for the reply. The developers will take care of that part. Have you ever heard of anyone using 400 instead of 404 when it's more of a user-generated error?
-EEE3
-
Have you tried adding this 404 page to IIS -> Website properties -> Custom Errors tab, then under 404, point to the web page that you would like to show up when a file is not found?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is an iframe redirect on the same Domain bad for SEO
Good morning. We have a vendor that has created a landing page with content that we want to use. Because of the way we built the site, the only way to use the content is to create an i-frame. The i-frame is re-directingon the same Domain. Would we benefit from the SEO Content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jdenbo_edf0 -
How to add Canonical Tags on Opencart Products
Does anyone know how to add canonical tags to product pages in Opencart? Is this possible to do in htaccess? If so, how specifically should it be written in? Please do not post any links to other pages which reference generic canonical information as I've read them all and none help. I'm looking for an Opencart specific answer, or a way to do it in htaccess.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
AddThis good or bad for SEO - Urgent
I have heard rumours that AddThis isn't good for SEO is that correct? Just thinking about adding it to my site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Should we add Schema.org for Website Articles on our blog page
Hi All, We use schema.org on most of our eCommerce website apart from on our "latest news/blog section" which we have all our how to's ...and other useful articles on . Am I missing a trick here ?.. I have found there is a https://schema.org/Article which I guess we could implement if it's a big help or if there's a better one ? Just wondered peoples thought as whether it is must have from an SEO/ranking point of view thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Creating 100,000's of pages, good or bad idea
Hi Folks, Over the last 10 months we have focused on quality pages but have been frustrated with competition websites out ranking us because they have bigger sites. Should we focus on the long tail again? One option for us is to take every town across the UK and create pages using our activities. e.g. Stirling
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PottyScotty
Stirling paintball
Stirling Go Karting
Stirling Clay shooting We are not going to link to these pages directly from our main menus but from the site map. These pages would then show activities that were in a 50 mile radius of the towns. At the moment we have have focused our efforts on Regions, e.g. Paintball Scotland, Paintball Yorkshire focusing all the internal link juice to these regional pages, but we don't rank high for towns that the activity sites are close to. With 45,000 towns and 250 activities we could create over a million pages which seems very excessive! Would creating 500,000 of these types of pages damage our site? This is my main worry, or would it make our site rank even higher for the tougher keywords and also get lots of traffic from the long tail like we used to get. Is there a limit to how big a site should be? edit0 -
Robots.txt 404 problem
I've just set up a wordpress site with a hosting company who only allow you to install your wordpress site in http://www.myurl.com/folder as opposed to the root folder. I now have the problem that the robots.txt file only works in http://www.myurl./com/folder/robots.txt Of course google is looking for it at http://www.myurl.com/robots.txt and returning a 404 error. How can I get around this? Is there a way to tell google in webmaster tools to use a different path to locate it? I'm stumped?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Can I add NOFOLLOW or NOINDEX attribute for better organic ranking?
I am working on online retail store which is highly dedicated to Patio Umbrellas. My website is on 2nd page of Google web search for Patio Umbrellas keyword. I have one another internal page with Patio Umbrellas text link. http://www.vistapatioumbrellas.com/21/patio-umbrellas.html I assume that, Google have confusion to give rank for my keyword during Patio Umbrellas keyword. I want to set NOFOLLOW attribute or NOINDEX FOLLOW meta for this page. Will it help me to rank high for Patio Umbrellas keyword. My ultimate goal is to reduce confusion for Patio Umbrellas keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Setting a 404, best practices
Is it enough to just delete a page, or is it necessary to do something else to 404 a page correctly? Is there a great link to explain how to set http status codes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0