5 replies to this topic

[laka133]

Hi,

I've made a 404 to manage all links.I parse de url not found, look at a bbdd and then include(php) the correct page with the variables it corresponds.

My question is:
-Will google(or bots) see it as a 404? how can I make the same so that bots don't see a 404 but I can manage the pages as html the same way.

Thanks a lot.

[leadegroot]

A 404 is defined by the http headers returned by the page (this is different to the head block of the page, recorded in the html).
One place you can check the headers for a page is http://www.delorie.c...eb/headers.html
The search engines will not see it as a 404 unless the http headers return a 404; it doesnt matter what the content (body or head in the html) return.
Plain vanilla HTML hosting often does not allow you to control this.

[laka133]

I still don't know how to change the 404 for a 200 . . ..
pls, need help, cause bots seems doesn't like it much

[Jill]

You want the bots to see it as a 404 or else you may run into problems with them indexing every single bad page.

[Randy]

What Jill said.

Unless your page names are the same with only the extension changed. If that's the case it's pretty easy to forward everything over and also provide a 301 server response that will aid the search engines in dropping the old page and indexing the new.

If the page names are all different it's a lot more painful. You would have to either let the 404's go and get the old pages dropped, or you would need to employ a (likely rather long) redirect at the server level.

Doing that after the 404 response has already been generated doesn't get the job done in my experience.

[leadegroot]

laka133, you'll need to give us details of your hosting before we can advice you on *how* to implement 404s correctly
It might be easier to ask your host, as they can tell you specifically, or immediately turn on the extensions you'll need to make it work.