Personalized 404 vs. redirecting

websynergy_no · 07-06-2004, 07:31 PM

Ok, i searched first to see if there was anything on this exact topic (site:internet-marketing-research.net 404) but didn't find any specifics, but please just redirect me to a worthy thread if one exists.
Is there ever any point in making a personalized 404 error page besides selling 404 traffic (which i do not do)? I would think that the best thing to do is to just redirect the person to your home page.
If i phrase my question another way: is there anything to gain SEO-wise/ranking-wise by making a personalized 404 page?

awall19 · 07-06-2004, 07:40 PM

I do not think it helps you with SEO, but maybe it makes it easier for you to collect feedback if you have errors in your site and allows you to point people to what you want them to do first.

I think Jill Whalen is often referenced as having a good 404 error page.

http://www.highrankings.com/dadfasdfasdfasdf

awall19 · 07-06-2004, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by awall19

I do not think it helps you with SEO, but maybe it makes it easier for you to collect feedback if you have errors in your site and allows you to point people to what you want them to do first.

I think Jill Whalen is often referenced as having a good 404 error page.

http://www.highrankings.com/dadfasdfasdfasdf

notice how she starts at the home page and then right into services. i think her newsletter should go higher up on the list, but that is a decent job of the general idea.

websynergy_no · 07-06-2004, 07:47 PM

I have a customer who currently just redirects the user to the index page on a 404 so i'm just wondering if there would be any benefits for them by using a customized 404 page instead. You mentioned feedback, and giving them options (sitemap or list of important pages). I wonder if there are any other benefits. Thanks for the quick reply awall and the good link.

awall19 · 07-06-2004, 09:40 PM

some asp programs use the 404 error page to redirect to the different internal pages in a site to get all of them spidered but I do not know exactly how this works or really much about asp.

the problem with sending people right to the home page is that over time you frustrate that customer and odds are they are not going to go out of there way to find out how to tell you your site is broken

minstrel · 07-06-2004, 10:37 PM

The other essential (IMO) feature of Jill Whalen's custom 404 is the site search feature - if they were looking for something very specific, then give them an immediate and obvious chance to search for it.

I also check my logs - for a small number of (important) pages that have been moved or renamed but still get several hits a month, I do a redirect on those specific pages - the rest go to the custom 404.

PhilC · 07-07-2004, 12:40 AM

Its better to specify your 'sitemap' as your 404 error page. Helps with usability, as well as search engine indexing. (Another reason why your sitemap should be neatly designed).

websynergy_no · 07-07-2004, 02:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sfxmystica

Its better to specify your 'sitemap' as your 404 error page. Helps with usability, as well as search engine indexing. (Another reason why your sitemap should be neatly designed).

Do SE's stop when they hit a 404 or do they actually read/follow content on the 404 page?

minstrel · 07-07-2004, 06:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sfxmystica

Its better to specify your 'sitemap' as your 404 error page. Helps with usability, as well as search engine indexing. (Another reason why your sitemap should be neatly designed).

If it's a large site, you may not be able to reasonably put all your page links on a single sitemap - again this isn't a bad idea as long as you have a site search box there too...

You should also make sure the 404 page has your main navigation links.

minstrel · 07-07-2004, 07:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by websynergy_no

Do SE's stop when they hit a 404 or do they actually read/follow content on the 404 page?

Intedresting question - of course, if your site doesn't contain errors spiders should never get there - one doesn't normally have any internal or external links to the error page. If a spider follows a link to a page that doesn't exist, wouldn't they just get the appropriate error code returned from the server and proceed with the next link, without ever actually landing on the error page?

websynergy_no · 07-07-2004, 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by minstrel

If a spider follows a link to a page that doesn't exist, wouldn't they just get the appropriate error code returned from the server and proceed with the next link, without ever actually landing on the error page?

That is what i meant. It seems logical to me. So the only reason to make a personalized 404 page would be for the users' sake (assuming that SE's stop at the error and don't read the error page).

awall19 · 07-07-2004, 04:47 PM

I know there are some ASP technologies that use the 404 error page to make spiders find the other pages, but I think normally they probably do not spider error pages.

websynergy_no · 07-08-2004, 12:38 AM

awall, thanks for the asp tip. Wish i had more time today to research this but my meeting is in a couple of hours. Found these links though for those who are interested in doing a little research: http://forums.seochat.com/archive/t-645
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-...asp+spider+404

would be cool if someone had some time and could draw a conclusion based upon the links above.

awall19 · 07-08-2004, 05:32 AM

here is what I was talking about ASP (again I know virtually nothing about ASP and hate when I work on ASP stuff)

"Trying to answer my own question here ...

After much deliberation and ... online reading I have found: http://asp101.com/articles/wayne/ext...es/default.asp

There it explains:

The nice thing about IIS is that when it calls 404.asp, it will send the page name that caused the error as a parameter in the querystring.

So my mistake was, that I have been trying to use trendy PATH_INFO, whereas I should have better stuck with the old-fashioned QUERY_STRING in the first place.

All works perfect, I do not even have to sort out the http header at all, because Webbug tells me it is 200 already for some strange reason.

"

also another person said this "I have set up and programmed my own custom 404.asp page, haven't experienced any problems. My pages are deepcrawled almost every day. I also think that my solution is better than the one found at http:// asp101.com/articles/wayne/extendingnames/default.asp, doesn't use session, don't connect to the database in the 404-file and you don't need to trim off the right end of the string. My url's look's something like this:
http:// www . domain.com/1/3/categoryname/"