404The role of the page

1To avoid dead links

Website Settings404After the page, if the website appears dead links, search engine spiders crawling these URLs get404”status response, it is known that the URL has expired, and the web page is no longer indexed, and feedback is given 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 are usually returned when users visit pages that do not exist or have been deleted 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 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 to tell the search engine to give up indexing this link. While if the site returns200 or302Status code, search engines will create an index for this link, resulting in a large number of different links pointing to the same web content. As a result, the trustworthiness of the search engine for the website is greatly reduced. Many websites have this problem:404The page returns200 or302Status code instead of404Status code.

4To avoid being penalized

Some websites may return200 status code or302Status codes, although these status codes do not affect users visiting the website, they may mislead search engines, making search engines believe that this page is a valid page and thus crawl it. If404Too many pages can result in a large number of duplicate pages, which may be penalized by search engines for cheating.