404The role of the page

1Avoid dead links

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

2Improve user experience

404Pages are usually for users who have accessed 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.

3Avoid a decrease in trust

Search engines identify the status of web pages through HTTP status codes. When a search engine receives a broken link, the website should return404Status code, telling the search engine to abandon the index of this link. While if the return200 or302Status code, the search engine 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.

4Avoid 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 may mislead search engines, making search engines think that this page is a valid page and thus crawl it. If404Too many pages can lead to a large number of duplicate pages, which may be penalized by search engines for cheating.