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
-
Http to Https implementation - What happens to the backlinks?
UPDATE: Found a source that says that Google recognizes the redirects, so it should be fine leaving backlinks as is - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-link-https-20552.html Hi again Mozers, When a site's protocol is changed from http to https, what impact would it have on the backlinks? Especially, when the backlinks doesn't contain any protocal mentioned. Thanks in advance Malika
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
How to find all 404 deadlinks - webmaster only allows 1000 to be downloaded...
Hi Guys I have a question...I am currently working on a website that was hit by a spam attack. The website was hacked and 1000's of adult censored pages were created on the wordpress site. The hosting company cleared all of the dubious files - but this has left 1000's of dead 404 pages. We want to fix the dead pages but Google webmaster only shows and allows you to download 1000. There are a lot more than 1000....does any know of any Good tools that allows you to identify all 404 pages? Thanks, Duncan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Duplicate page title at bottom of page - ok, or bad?
Can I get you experts opinion? A few years ago, we customized our pages to repeat the page title at the bottom of the page. So the page title is in the breadcrumbs at the top, and then it's also at the bottom of the page under all the contents. Here is a sample page: bit.ly/1pYyrUl I attached a screen shot and highlighted the second occurence of the page title. Am worried that this might be keyword stuffing, or over optimizing? Thoughts or advice on this? Thank you so much! ron ZH8xQX6
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Is it a problem to use a 301 redirect to a 404 error page, instead of serving directly a 404 page?
We are building URLs dynamically with apache rewrite.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
When we detect that an URL is matching some valid patterns, we serve a script which then may detect that the combination of parameters in the URL does not exist. If this happens we produce a 301 redirect to another URL which serves a 404 error page, So my doubt is the following: Do I have to worry about not serving directly an 404, but redirecting (301) to a 404 page? Will this lead to the erroneous original URL staying longer in the google index than if I would serve directly a 404? Some context. It is a site with about 200.000 web pages and we have currently 90.000 404 errors reported in webmaster tools (even though only 600 detected last month).0 -
Google showing me a 404 link from an external source?
In my list of 404 errors from Google webmaster I have one with the "linked from" section showing an external link. This seems like a broken link (which obviously I will try and fix to get the link juice) but why would Google recognize it as a 404? From Google: | URL: | www.broken URL | | | Error details | In Sitemaps | Linked from | | <colgroup><col></colgroup>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter
| http://externalwebsite.com |
| | |0 -
How to be a good SEO optimizer while competing with a good ranked Bad SEO optimizer?
My keywords are very competitive. My on page optimization report gives A grade for all the keywords I want to target to my Root domain. But my root domain does not show up on search engines for those same keywords. So thanks to SEOmoz i have managed to understand the place I lack is good link building. My competitors have done lot of link building through spamming, commenting on blogs, directories etc. Now according to good seo, this is not right. What do i do? I get digging more in it, i realized that i am getting traffic mostly for less globally searched keywords. But my competitors get high traffic from well searched keywords. How do i cope with such competition? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiddleEastSeo0 -
Sitelinks: Does Google Recognize Your Requests for Removal?
I've been trying to influence branded SERPs recently by demoting certain pages from appearing in the Sitelinks feature provided in Google's Webmaster Tools. However, despite demoting various URLs, they continue to appear for the branded SERPs nearly a week after they should've been suppressed. What is your experience with Sitelinks? Do links you request to demote ever disappear or change positions in the SERPs for you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eMagineSEO0 -
301 or 404?
My client has a classified ads website with hundreds of thousands of classified ads. These ads expire quite fast. When the ad expires it gets removed. At the moment this results in a 404 page and thus hundreds of thousands of 404 erros in Webmasters Tools. From what I know this damages SERP results due to slow indexing of important sites and 404 being just plain bad SEO. I suggested doing a 301 from the expired ads to a upper category but this feels like cheating. The content hasn't actually moved, it has been removed. What would you suggest?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PanuKuuluvainen0