dstiles - 11:22 pm on Mar 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

g1smd - as far as I know there is no actual problem except that WMT notes that what google thinks should be a 404 returns a 200. I assume they test this using impossible URLs that they expect to return 404. Which frankly is no concern of theirs since the site is designed to retain customers not to play catch with google (yeah, I know!).

The fact that they are interpreting 301 as 200 is the interesting part. If they didn't send duff URLs in the first place it wouldn't do that anyway: it's for humans not dumb machines.

suzukik - as noted, it was actually a 301 not a 200, although the 200 obviously followed on from the successful 301.

Not sure why google thinks it's confusing to punters, since the punter has (generally) mis-typed a page name and gets the site s/he wants with a menu from which they can choose the correct page. Helpful rather than confusing, since otherwise they'd probably get the basic "That didn't work, what did you do wrong?" type of message, which IS confusing (which bit did I get wrong) and, to me, also VERY annoying.

What I read from your google URL is that google thinks it's confusing to their robot. So stop sending duff URL.

It is entirely probable that the webmaster who sets up a 301 redirect to the home page for a duff page request is the kind of person who will ensure removed pages are treated with appropriate redirects, hence helping the visitor. People who do not do that almost certainly don't have a clue about setting up 301's in the first place so they just issue 404s.