404The role of the page

1To avoid dead links

Website Settings404After the page, if the website appears dead links, the search engine spider crawling this kind of URL gets the "404When the "status response" is returned, it is known that the URL has expired, so the web page is no longer indexed, and feedback is sent to the data center to delete the web page represented by the URL from the index database. Avoid affecting the inclusion of the website due to dead links.

2To improve user experience

404Pages usually occur when users visit non-existent or deleted pages on the website, and the server returns404Error pages, informing the browser that the requested page does not exist or the link is incorrect, while guiding users to use other pages on the website instead of closing the window and leaving, eliminating the user's frustration.

3To avoid a decrease in trust

Search engines identify the status of web pages through HTTP status codes. When a search engine receives an erroneous link, the website should return404Status code, telling the search engine to abandon the index of this link. And if the return200 or302Status code, search engines will create an index for this link, which leads to a large number of different links pointing to the same web content. As a result, the search engine's trust in the website is greatly reduced. Many websites have this problem:404The page returns200 or302Status code instead of404Status code.

4To avoid being penalized

Some websites due to some incorrect server configurations, causing the return to be200 status code or302Status codes, although these status codes do not affect users visiting the website, they can mislead search engines and make search engines think that this page is a valid page, thereby capturing it. If404Too many pages can result in a large number of duplicate pages, which may be penalized by search engines for cheating.