Google and Pages not Found

best strategy for pages that no longer exist

[strategies]

Got a question for you all.

We are constantly adding and deleting pages from our miva ecommerce website (i guess like most webmasters do)

When someone clicked on a link in google that had been deleted from our site they got the error message

Error Code: MER-DTB-00022
Description: Category 'AIRPORTS' not found

Obviously not good for the searcher or for us.

So we programmed in a redirect to the home page.

Question is: will google eventually take the page out of the index or will i just keep piling up pages in the google index which are dead? Also, will google penalize the site for having a redirect? What is the best way to handle this problem?

[pageoneresults]

I believe there are two ways to handle this. If the product is no longer available, then set up a custom 404.

If the products are still available but have been moved or renamed, then you can set up a 301 permanent redirect to the new page.

You need to make sure that you are returning a 404 or 301 for those dead pages, at least for your visitors sake. If the product is no longer available, a custom 404 with a short message might be in order. I'll usually set the site-map up as the custom 404.

Use the Server Header Checker [searchengineworld.com] to make sure those dead pages are returning the proper status code in the header.

[jrobbio]

One of the best strategies I've seen is to have a 404 page that is also a search page and identifies similar pages. Incredibly useful if you get it right, although frowned upon by others if it just suggests other products when the page does not exist at all.

[strategies]

Used the server header checker on a nonexistent page and got:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK

That is where i would want a searcher to go if a page didn't exist, but how will a googlebot handle such a page? Will it continue to keep it in the index (not good)?

[pageoneresults]

Not good. If the page is no longer available, the server should be returning a 404, not 200. 200 means that the page is okay and still resides in its respective location. You need to make changes so any pages not found either return a 404 or 301 permanent redirect to the new resource.

If you are doing a 301 permanent redirect, make sure to double check the location of the redirect and that it is pointing to the correct updated resource.

[strategies]

Is there a way to redirect from a non-existent page to another page, and return 404 to googlebots?

[killroy]

I have a situation were, because of server stup I cannot always return a 404. Because the webserver doesn'T know if the database item exists, and the script cannot modify http headers.

would it be ok, to return a 200, an error message with related and helpfull links, then place a meta noindex in teh head area?

Would this page be eventually removed from the index?

How long to meta noindex pages take to be removed form the index?

SN

[Oaf357]

Is there a way to redirect from a non-existent page to another page, and return 404 to googlebots?

You can return a 404 or redirect with a 301. A 404 will get the page out of the index, a 301 will redirect a spider to the requisite page, thus removing the non-exsistant page.

[strategies]

How do i do that? with .htaccess? am running on an apache server with miva ecommerce software (dynamic pages)

thanks!

[pageoneresults]

strategies, I think you'll find everything you are looking for here...

Redirecting URLs on an Apache Server [webmasterworld.com]

Topic specific link...

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