Google Webmaster Central errors
- 25th Mar 2008
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that’s what I get when I try to see the stats on www.davidnaylor.co.uk
“We have detected that your 404 (file not found) error page returns a 200 (Success) status in the header.”
really that’s new to me, because I handle it with a 301 plug in, all 404’s get logged and 301 to the root then I sort out, what the 301 Page should be..
but the page that Webmaster Central is looking for returns a 200 .. wtf .. and does this mean my blog just picked a Black flag in the organic listings ???
DaveN
10 Comments | Leave a comment »
Your probably getting that error because you verified the site with a html file upload. They then check to see if non-existent files give a 404 so that I couldn’t log in and verify your site under my account. If they get a 200 for non-existing files anyone verifying your site would be able to access your Google webmaster tools and start removing pages. Right now you issue a 301 and then your homepage returns a 200, so they are seeing it as a 200 for the non-existing file.
You can still verify with the meta tag and handle your 404s this way.
yep, I had this happen, I wrote a little module to 301 all 404’s then realised that they check your 404 when the authorise you, so if you got 99d999ae999gg029.html as your auth file, then they will do a lookup for noexist_99d999ae999gg029.html so if you auto 301 it will pick this up as a problem, I just added a little function to exclude certain files from my auto redirect.
Maybe I’m a wuss, but the potential SEO advantage of 301-ing missing files that should really be given a 404 header (like you’re doing) would have to be REALLY big for me to risk doing that.
I’d be interested in hearing from anyone:
(1) does what Dave’s doing here produce a noticeable advantage?
(2) does it pose any kind of risk in terms of pissing off Google and the other engines?
Zorro say your website has a page ..
zorro.html
and I link to it
zorro.htm when the SE’s hit that page it will create a 404, which I will log and 301 to zorro.html
12 months later the Zorro page is going to get replaced with :
Don_Diego_Vega.html so you 301 both zorro.htm and zorro.html make any sense
Z
Yeah, that all makes sense but what I don’t understand is when I go to a http header checker like:
http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html
And type in any URL on your site that I know has never existed like:
http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/dfdfdfdfdsfdffdsfsdfadsfsdf
I always get a 301 header.
So you’ve replaced all 404’s with a 301.
It’s fine with me - I just wouldn’t have the balls to do this on a client’s website, out of fear that it would be considered non-kosher by Google.
But if it’s considered OK, and works well, then heck I’d love to try it…
Zorro - The saftest way to do this is rather that automating the entire process is have your module pick up all your 404’s and give you the options on which ones to 301 or not with some sensible defaults to speed up the process. It has caused me some issues in the past with unexpected 301’s as a result of temporarily moved files, so I prefer now to manually verify them before doing the 404 however I have some pattern based redirection code that allows me to define new rules based on patterns from the 404 urls which speeds things up massively.
Hmm. Where did my comments go?
g1smd Akismet dumped you into spam.. you where lucky I don’t look in there often
the redirection by plug-in urbangiraffe.com gives just that option suncao discussed. You can watch for 404’s and 301 them on a case by case basis with the click of a mouse.
Heh, Dave, there’s 3 or 4 comments that aren’t showing up still…
I wonder what has changed, as that hasn’t happened before.