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
-
Switching from Http to Https, but what about images and image link juice?
Hi Ya'll. I'm transitioning our http version website to https. Important question: Do images have to have 301 redirects? If so, how and where? Please send me a link or explain best practices. Best, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1241 -
Is it bad I have a cluster of canonical urls that 301 re-direct?
Just went through a migration. We have a group of canonical URLs that are NOT the preferred url, but 301 re-direct to the preferred URL. Does this essentially "break even" and the incorrect canonical URL becomes obsolete? And/or would this be considered potentially bad and confusing for bots?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lunavista-comm0 -
Category 404 Error in Wordpress | Help!!!
Hello Gurus hope everyone is having a fantastic day. Right so I've been pulling my hair with this 404 error on links as such: htttp://manvanlondon.co.uk/category/clients/removals/man-and-van-wandsworth This link appears in the category page clients and the /removals/man-and-van-wandsworth part is the link that should take the user on the Man and Van Wandsworth page in the/ from the footer. However this link and all other links in the footer on these category pages/posts appear to be broken ONLY on this category pages, thus creating 404 errors. And those pages(i.e man and van Wandsworth) are not even categorized. The website is www.manvanlondon.co.uk . We tried various things on Wordpress and nothing is working including non-indexing. Has anyone met this problem before? Is there a way to fix it? Thank you for your time, and hope my explanations make sens. Monica
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa0 -
What are Soft 404's and are they a problem
Hi, I have some old pages that were coming up in google WMT as a 404. These had links into them so i thought i'd do a 301 back to either the home page or to a relevant category or page. However these are now listed in WMT as soft 404's. I'm not sure what this means and whether google is saying it doesn't like this? Any advice welcomed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
Focusing on Multiple Niches for one site: good or bad?
Is it wise to focus on multiple niches for one site, rather than zoning in one or two different niches? On one hand, you can target many more topics and go after tons of keywords, but on the other hand doesn't google get confused of what your site is really about? Won't google just focus on one of the niches that you provide more than all others? Any input would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Managing Multiple Websites via Add-On Domain
Hey SEOMOZ community, I've always been curious about whether or not hosting multiple websites through an 'add-on' domain has positive/negative effects on SEO for websites. Currently, I'm hosting 5 sites through an add-on domain at Hostgator.com. Is this a poor way to set-up my sites or is this OK?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NiallSmith0 -
Geo-tagging using cookie - Is it Good or Bad for Rankings
We have a fairly large site which does a cookie-based 302 redirect to the the specific city page if someone types in the Home page URL. Though if the cookie is not available (first time user) it goes to the Homepage and asks user to select the city as our services are city specific. Everything is working fine with this setup. Though our tech team now wants to display the contents of city page on homepage URL itself if the cookie is available without 302 redirecting to new URL. Though no-cookie available scenario remains unchanged. Technically, I think this change should work fine without any ranking issues as still the first time users see the actual homepage as does Googlebot. Please confirm possible issues in rankings with this change from your experiences as based upon city present in the cookie homepage will display different content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webmaster_SEO0 -
Apache not directing to 404?
I have a PHP website that produces an actual page when /index.php/GarbageURL/MoreDirectories/Page.suffix/DirectoryAgain is typed in a browser. Why? How? For what purpose? The content and HTML is produced in the source, but the images and css are broken due to the location of the file, obvi. I don't understand what this default tendency is for.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bombbomb0