| January 2007
The importance of an effective
custom "Page not found" error page
Of all the clients we’ve worked with
I’d say about half do not have this important
error procedure setup on their servers.
The issue - Many of the inner
pages of your web site get indexed by search
engines and if you rename or delete them you
may loose some prospective visitors if you do
not have an effective custom “Page not
found” error page procedure setup on your
server.
It can take months after web pages are moved
or deleted before the search engines update
their indexes so a number of people may try
to reach pages that no longer exist on your
site. This is especially important after site
redesigns when large numbers of pages may be
replaced with new pages with different file
names.
As an example of what typically
happens when no custom “Page not found”
error page is in place, copy the link below
into a web browser and try it (note, don’t
click on it within an email message as it won’t
work correctly) -
http://www.companyname.com/badpage.htm
You should have received a standard “The
page cannot be found” error page from
your browser.
Notice that this error page does include a
link to the home page for the domain that the
visitor tried to reach. Unfortunately many people
don’t notice this link and give up trying
to reach the site. Most hit the “back”
button and try other pages in the search results.
FYI - You probably saw an
“HTTP 404 - File not found” message
somewhere on the page. A 404 is the error
code that is sent to the visitor’s browser
when a file is not found. That is why these
errors are often called 404 errors.
Now here are a couple of examples of
effective custom “Page not found”
error pages. (Again, copy them into
a browser don’t click on them within an
email message or they won’t work correctly)
-
http://www.ibm.com/badpage
http://www.microsoft.com/badpage
These error pages are setup by Microsoft and
IBM on their web servers. The server automatically
displays the error page for most “Page
not found” errors. The pages “look
& feel” like regular pages from the
web site and they give clear messages and links
to help move the visitor along into the rest
of the web site.
Check with your IT people or web hosting company
to see if they can setup a “custom page
not found” error page that is returned
instead of the standard browser error page.
If so you can develop a web page with much of
the same “look & feel” as other
pages on the site with clear links to the home
page, possibly a link to a site map or site
search, etc.
The positive effect of a custom “page
not found” error page is almost impossible
to measure since you obviously can’t tell
how many people didn’t reach your web
site. It won’t help your search engine
rankings either, but it should help increase
the number of searchers who successfully arrive
at your web site.
More tips for custom "Page not found"
error pages
Reduce the clutter - The main
task of a custom “page not found”
error page is to let people know they tried
to reach a page that doesn't exist on your site
and to give them an obvious and simple path(s)
into the main site, without too much clutter
that could keep them from seeing the important
messages and links immediately.
Sorry Wrong Page - It's important
that people clearly see a message similar to
"Sorry, Wrong Page" on these error
pages or many people will get confused about
what just happened. Notice that the Microsoft
and IBM pages include this type of message.
Use Absolute Links - We’ve
found that it’s best to strip these error
pages down and have very few images and links
on them (except in the case where you provide
a site map).
The links to the images and any hyperlinks
on the page should be absolute links (including
the full URL path such as www.ibm.com/images/pic123
.gif) rather then using the default relative
links inserted by most web development tools.
Even the link to a CSS sheet if used should
be an absolute link. This is because relative
links may not work depending what folder on
your site the bad link points to. If the missing
page was in the root level of the web site (where
the error page usually is) relative links usually
work fine, but if the bad link points to any
other folder on the web site the links may not
work. When this happens your visitor may see
a page with missing images such as your logo
etc. Worse, the links you provided to the pages
on your site, such as the home page, may not
work!
Ensure correct 404 error code is served
- Finally, it's very important that the correct
404 error code is returned when a custom “page
not found” error page is served. If you
just redirect to a site map or home page without
returning the 404 error code the search engines
will not know that the URL in its index is a
broken link. They may start indexing multiple
copies of the site map or home page or whatever
page you redirect too, under all the different
bad URL's which can cause real problems (such
as duplicate filtering, pages getting removed
from the index, delayed crawls etc)
Here’s a server head check to test that
a 404 code is returned,
http://www.sim-php.info/http-status-viewer.php
(or search on “HTTP header check”
for other tools)
Try testing Microsoft's http://www.microsoft.com/badpage.
Notice the 404 code is returned.
George
Aspland
|
