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
-
Software to Analyse Bad Links
Is it possible to get a pretty good idea of my site's link profile by merging the link data from Google Webmaster Tools, MOZ and SEMRUSH (backlinks). I would think that combining the linking domains from these three packages would create a pretty good profile. Once I create a list of domains that link to my site is it possible to run them thru MOZ so as to evaluate their quality? Last year I paid a reputable SEO firm to run a link analysis, process link removal requests and finally a disavow, only to see my domain authority decline from 33 to 24. So I am leary of the process. That being said I have reviewed the disavow file that was submitted last year and still see about a third of the low quality domains still linking to our site. Alternatively is it worthwhile to run a link detox report. Maybe it is worth biting the bullet and spending the $175.00 dollars to run a report. Our site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com) does not have too many links so maybe I can research this manually. Thoughts???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
404's - Do they impact search ranking/how do we get rid of them?
Hi, We recently ran the Moz website crawl report and saw a number of 404 pages from our site come back. These were returned as "high priority" issues to fix. My question is, how do 404's impact search ranking? From what Google support tells me, 404's are "normal" and not a big deal to fix, but if they are "high priority" shouldn't we be doing something to remove them? Also, if I do want to remove the pages, how would I go about doing so? Is it enough to go into Webmaster tools and list it as a link no to crawl anymore or do we need to do work from the website development side as well? Here are a couple of examples that came back..these are articles that were previously posted but we decided to close out: http://loyalty360.org/loyalty-management/september-2011/let-me-guessyour-loyalty-program-isnt-working http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mark-johnson-speaks-at-motivation-show Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
301 page into a 404
Hi I have a job board site and the way the site is built means that I cant 404 job pages once they have expired. To combat this Im looking to 301 the pages into a 404 page.Do any of you have any experience with this? Are there any potential pitfalls to doing a 404 this way? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndrewAkesson0 -
NoIndexing Massive Pages all at once: Good or bad?
If you have a site with a few thousand high quality and authoritative pages, and tens of thousands with search results and tags pages with thin content, and noindex,follow the thin content pages all at once, will google see this is a good or bad thing? I am only trying to do what Google guidelines suggest, but since I have so many pages index on my site, will throwing the noindex tag on ~80% of thin content pages negatively impact my site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Sitemap contains Meta NOINDEX pages - Good or bad?
Hi, Our sitemap is created by our e-commerce software - Magento - We are probably going to make a lot of products Meta No Index for the moment, until all the content has been corrected on them - but by default, as they are enabled, they will appear in Sitemap. So, the question is: "Should pages that are Meta NOINDEX be listed in a sitemap"? Does it matter? thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
I had most of my sites down for a month for technical problems, how do I recover my SEO status ?
I had most of my sites down for a month for technical problems, how do I recover my SEO status ? I did everything possible to not get offline, but I did, some months before my domais were extremely slow, leading to failures over failures. I got them down and moved to another host. What should I do in SEO know that the mess is done ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aamato0 -
Is it better to use geo-targeted keywords or add the locations as separate keywords?
For example... state keyword (nyc real estate) or keyword, state (nyc, real estate) = 2 keywords Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cyclone0 -
How to use modrewrite to redirect certain portions of a site
Hello! My question is as follows: Suppose there is SiteA which is a blog that has a url structure of http://www.siteA.com/blog/category/article Now suppose I'd like to redirect those articles to a new domain (which has the same url structure) BUT excluding a certain category, say, 'blah/' so in other words, some examples: http://www.siteA.com/blog/shoes/best-shoes-to-buy ->redirects-> http://www.siteB.com/blog/shoes/best-shoes-to-buy/ (there is a trailing slash here for some reason) BUT http://www.siteA.com/blog/blah/foo-bar -NO REDIRECT- (because it's in the /blah/ category). Any and all feedback & help would be much appreciated 🙂 Thanks!~
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | apo11o1770