404The role of the page

1To avoid dead links

Website Settings404After the page, if the website appears dead links, the search engine spider crawling such URLs receives404When the URL is known to be invalid, the search engine no longer indexes the web page and feeds back 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

404Page, usually for users who have accessed non-existent or deleted pages on the website, the server returns404Error page, 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, to tell the search engine to give up indexing this link. And if the website returns200 or302Status code, search engines will create an index for this link, leading to a large number of different links pointing to the same page 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 may return200 status code or302Status codes, although these status codes do not affect users visiting the website, they may mislead search engines, causing search engines to believe that this page is a valid page and thus crawl it. If404Too many pages create a large number of duplicate pages, which may be penalized by search engines as cheating.