404The role of the page

1To avoid dead links

Website Settings404After the page, if the website appears dead links, search engine spiders crawling such websites get the message “404”status response, it is known that the URL has expired, so the web page will no longer be indexed, and feedback will be 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 usually occur 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 decrease in trust

Search engines identify the status of web pages through HTTP status codes. When a search engine receives an incorrect link, the website should return404Status codes, telling search engines to abandon the indexing of this link. And if the return200 or302Status codes, search engines 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 codes instead of404Status codes.

4To avoid being penalized

Some websites due to some incorrect server configurations, resulting in the return of200 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 as cheating.