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 website will get the status of “404”status response, knowing that the URL has expired, it will no longer index the web page and will feedback 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.

2to improve user experience

404pages are usually when users visit non-existent or deleted pages on the website, and the server returns404error pages, inform the browser that the requested page does not exist or the link is incorrect, and guide users to use other pages on the website instead of closing the window and leaving, eliminating the user's frustration.

3to avoid a drop 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 to tell the search engine to abandon the index of this link. While if the website returns200 or302status code, the search engine will create an index for this link, leading 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, return200 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 result in a large number of duplicate pages, which may be penalized by search engines for cheating.