Yahoo Paid Search Display Name shows errors in WMT

[apeepa]

When I run Paid Search campaigns I've been giving a display name that is more catching to the eye -

ex. www.sample.com/BrandName vs www.sample.com

These display name pages - if typed in to the browser do not exist. When advertising through google partners, there are no problems. But when advertising through Yahoo's partner's - since Yahoo encrypts its links, I get errors in Google's Webmaster Tools that there are linking pages that are not found.

What I've been doing is adding a 301 redirect whenever I see them popup on GWT. Is this the correct solution?

Recently I've been hit with a google penalty(the halloween episode) and I'm looking at everything I do.

Also, I currently do not utilize a 404 page, rather I redirect a user to my homepage if a page is not found. Is this OK.

Thank you all for your help

[tedster]

Hello apeepa, and welcome to the forums.

Why wait until WMT shows an error? I'd say place some content at that url, or use a 301 redirect, and do so the minute you know what the display url will be.

I currently do not utilize a 404 page, rather I redirect a user to my homepage if a page is not found. Is this OK.

First, I may not be understanding this correctly, since as I read it, that redirect would stop WMT from showing any errors.

However, it is not a good idea to redirect bad url requests. I'm assuming here that the final destination page is returning a 200OK status in the server header. You need to be able to return a 404 http status in the server header so that the spiders get the message "that was a bad url you just requested." Then that url will not be indexed, and that's what you want.

You can create a custom error page to show the end user any content you want, as long as the original request gets a 404 status code in response from your custom page.

[apeepa]

thank you tedster, that really helps.

I had the 404 option on godaddy set as: "Make my 404 Page my Home Page."

I checked on [gsitecrawler.com...]
and it shows that mysite.com/randomthings actually produced a 404. I'll create a custom 404 page anyway as per your advise.

Thanks for your confidence that 301 on the display URLs on yahoo ads is the right thing to do. Love the site - will be here a while.

[tedster]

I had the 404 option on godaddy set as: "Make my 404 Page my Home Page."

Then GoDaddy may be returning a correct 404 status when you choose that option - in which case it's OK.

You can check the server header code with many tools, including the LiveHTTPHeaders add-on for the Firefox browser. I find that add-on is something I use all the time. It's also invaluable to be sure that a redirect is actually returning a 301 status and not a 302.