What is the best way to handle 404's

[ericfwebmaster]

I am currently handling 404's by serving a copy of my homepage. I am not redirecting to my homepage but rather if you type a nonexistent page like mydomain.com/uhgefuybherfber this url will stay in the address bar and the copy of my homepage is served through a missing.html file.

My web server sends a 404 header when any nonexistent page is hit and I had assumed this meant Google would handle the page differently and not treat it as dup content. I have many pages which are still spidered which do not exist on my site anymore due to redesigns and updates. My concerns are that my homepage is getting a dup penalty and/or that my site is flagged as a site with multiple duplicate pages because the same custom 404 page(which is an exact copy of my homepage) is served for all nonexistent pages.

I see that none of the top results I have checked are handling 404's this way. Most have no system for serving html pages for 404's and I get the standard browser error. Some do a server-side redirect to the actual homepage.

What is the absolute best way to handle 404's from a stand point of maximizing my ability to score well in Google for my homepage and existing pages?

[WebGuerrilla]

As long as you are sending an actual 404, you shouldn't have any problems. Have you found something specific that makes you believe G is actually indexing your custom 404?

[ericfwebmaster]

No. I feel like it shouldn't be a problem either but I have read things which make me wonder if I am not hitting a dup penalty glitch or if there is a right or wrong way to do this that I am not aware of. I just notice nobody who is scoring is doing what I am doing.

[killroy]

try addign a unique phrase and see if that phrase shows up in google.

SN

[top5jamaica]

i once had a problem where other engines, not google, were indexing the custom 404

[ericfwebmaster]

My concern is not that they are indexing my 404 page but that I may be doing something that is bringing my site a penalty.

[lbobke]

I just looked at my 404-page and it has not been cached by Google.
If you want to make sure, you can always include a "noindex" in the header of the error page.

Laurenz

[WebGuerrilla]

If it's getting cached, then you aren't serving a proper 404. Many sites are actually setup to serve a 302 that redirects to the custom error page.

Bots follow the 302 and index the page they land on.