Redirect my 404 page to index page or a sitemap?

PR optimizing

[cwebb]

Should I redirect my 404 pages to point to the sitemap or the index?

Does this influence any page's PR?

[jackofalltrades]

Id say go for the index page - it should be the point at which users can start their "experience" with your site! :)

However, if a user gets a 404, then one of the reasons could be that you have changed the internal structure of your site and the SE they have been refered from hasnt reflected the changes yet.

In this case, it might be worthwhile building a custom 404 page (including a sitemap style directory structure). This way if they are looking for something in particullar (from a SE search) then they wont be dissapointed, as although they havent arrived at the page they wanted, they have in front of them a good idea of what you have to offer.

There may be other technical pros and cons on the index vs sitemap vs custom 404 arguement, but im afraid i dont know them! :) Maybe someone else can contribute.

JOAT

<added>dont worry too much about PR - concentrate on what is best for your visitors!</added>

[quiet_man]

I agree with JOAT. Concentrate on what is best for real world users. Personally I have a custom 404 page that links to both the index and the site map, and includes a site search box as well.
Apple is a well-used example of a good custom 404 page.

[NedFlanders]

sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this, but how do you set up a 404 redirect page? I have noticed that a lot of spiders look for pages that don't exist on my server. It would be good to mop all of these up!

[cwebb]

Thanks guys, just wanted to hear some other opinions on that. How to do it? I have it written down somewhere but I'm sure someone will answer that question before I can figure out where I left my stuff

[Brian]

Ned: Just stick 404 error into Google and you'll get a big bunch of explanations about a custom 404. It's real easy. The main thing to remember is you're uploading two new files, one of which is in plain text.

Small hint, in my view: write the page to make people feel they've done something right. If you scream error - no matter how pretty - they'll hit the back button.

[The Toecutter]

cwebb - try this:

You can make custom 404 page-not-found using an .htaccess file. Here's how I did it:

1) Create a file in Notepad called htaccess.txt and store it in same directory on your hard drive as your index.html file.
2) put lines like these in it:

Send a redirect to handle 404 Errors
errorDocument 404 /page-not-found.html

3) save the file to your hard drive
4) make a html file and save-as "page-not-found.html"
5) upload both files to your root directory on your host server.
6) rename the "htaccess.txt" file to ".htaccess" (without the quotes)
7) test it to make sure it works!

Then whenever someone generates a 404 page not found error they will get your custom html page instead of the server's standard 404 error page, and you can control what they see and where they go.