Google indexing a 404

Page moved - custom 404 is now showing up on Google

[roddy]

A few weeks ago I rewrote 3 or 4 pages, due to stuff I'd read on here. One of the things i did was to change filenames from stuff like
rubbishfilename.html
to
reallygoodfilename.html

I deleted the old files.

Over the last week the new 'reallygoodfilename.html' pages have turned up in the index. I decided to look for the old ones in the index, to see if they'd dropped out or not. Suprisingly (to me) Google had updated the entry for the deleted 'rubbishfilename.html' with the content of my custom 404 message.

Why does it do that? Is it meant to? The really odd thing is that if you do a search for the phrase I use in the title I'm right up at the top of the SERPs - despite the fact the phrase's the title of a very well known song - and it's just a 404 . . .

Any enlightenment out there? I realise it's not a major issue, I'm just curious.

And also, I'll take the opportunity to thank you all for the advice posted on here - The four pages I rewrote have gone from 3 or 4 pages down to all in the top 10. Granted it's not a competitive field, but considering I didn't know my HTML from my JPG 9 months ago, I'll settle for that. Now, to go and choose some keywords people actually search for . . .

Roddy

[TeofenGL]

How are you handling the 404? It's possible the server is not returning an actual 404 response code even as it shows the custom page.

[pageoneresults]

It's possible the server is not returning an actual 404 response code even as it shows the custom page.

I think TeofenGL hit the nail on the head. I've seen many custom 404s return a 200 status code in the server header when it should be returning a 404 status code.

Verify your Server Header information [searchengineworld.com]

Here is an example of a server header returning the correct 404 status code...

Server Response: http*//www.example.com/non-existent-page
Status: HTTP/1.1 404 Object Not Found
Server: Nunya
Date: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:42:03 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Length: 38304
Content-Type: text/html

[edited by: pageoneresults at 2:44 pm (utc) on Sep. 22, 2003]

[michael heraghty]

Interesting, and relates to something I'd noticed lately too.

A couple of weeks ago, I changed the titles of all of the pages in my weblog from "myweblog: title" to simply "title".

Google has picked up on changes in the content of those pages, but is still using the "myweblog: title" in its SERPs...

[roddy]

Tried the link, and got this
>> Status: HTTP/1.1 302 Found

So I guess that's the problem. I can't see any reason why I should worry about it though - or is there . . .?

Roddy

[pageoneresults]

I can't see any reason why I should worry about it though - or is there . . .?

Yes, that is a problem. You are instructing GoogleBot to retain the original URI (the old one) but redirecting it to a temporary resource (the new URI).

If that were a 301 permanent redirect, then there would be no problem as you would be providing instructions to ignore the old URI and permanently redirect to the new URI.

If the page no longer exists and there is no replacement for the page, then a 404 is applicable. If the page has been renamed, then you should use a 301 permanent redirect so that the old pages you have listed out there are permanently redirected to the new pages. You should also instruct your link partners to update their URIs if applicable.