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 gets404”Status response, knowing that the URL has expired, no longer index the web page, and feedback to the data center to delete the web page represented by the URL from the index database. Avoid affecting the website's inclusion due to dead links.

2To improve user experience

404When a user visits a non-existent or deleted page on the website, 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 codes, telling the search engine to abandon the indexing of this link. And if the response is200 or302Status codes, the search engine will build 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 codes instead of404Status codes.

4To avoid being penalized

Some websites may return200 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 lead to a large number of duplicate pages, which may be penalized by search engines for cheating.