Google's 404 Widget
There is a pretty cool new tool available recently to webmasters that are using Google's Webmaster Tools, which is still in it's experimental stages, but is called Enhanced 404 Pages. What this refers to is an HTTP 404 response, which is also known as a "page not found" error. Everyone has, at one point or another, clicked a link to a web page and gotten a page that says "We're sorry, but the page that you are looking for cannot be found".
What Google is trying to do is to help make those pages more useful. I blogged in the past about how we had some minor problems with the search engines after we started re-directing URLs that were not found to a search results page. Behind the scenes, the response that search engines were getting was a 301 (permanently re-directed) response, and then a 200 (all is well) response when the search results page was loaded in. What they were expecting is the correct 404 (page not found) error, since that resources could not be located on the server, and there was not a relevant re-direct in place.
So that sparks the question of how to make your 404 pages more useful. It was something that was on my mind anyway when all of the sudden this new "Enhance 404 Pages" widget appeared in their webmaster tools.
More Useful Error Pages
By simply copying and pasting a small snippet of code to your custom 404 error pages, you can include the following useful information automatically on your 404 pages. Please note that some of these features are not yet available for all sites, as this widget is still experimental
- A suggestion of a valid URL that is the closest match to the one that could not be found.
- An alternative URL that the user could try.
- A link to a sitemap that could help the user find the correct URL.
- A link to the site's home page.
- A search field so that the user can search the current site for the information that they are looking for.
I think that it is important to point out that a few of these are also very useful from a search engine optimization point of view as well. If a search engine spider were to visit a URL that could not be found, it would still receive a 404 response that would let it know that the URL it tried is not valid and needs to be removed from the index. However, if (and that is a big if) it were to still spider the information on the 404 page, which I'm not sure that they do, it would get links to a sitemap and a couple of other valid URLs in which to follow. To be honest, I could see the spiders simply moving on when they get the 404 response, since that seems like a more efficient way for them to achieve their lofty goals.
Since this is a simple widget that Google provides, features will be provided as they become available. All a webmaster has to do is go to their Webmaster Tools account and select Tools > Enhance 404 pages. Just copy and paste the code provided into your custom 404 page template, and you are done. You can make visual adjustments by changing the CSS styles in the code.
I know that this will be a big help from a user standpoint, regardless of its impact on search engine optimization. Personally I like this kind of thing, and I am interested to see how this tool evolves and changes as they add features.
This post is filed under Developers' Corner and has the following keyword tags: google, webmaster tools, search engine optimization.
