404 Error pages

Hi Team,

The problem I have, is when you remove a page from your site google does not remove it from there search engine, this is because there is a 404 error page, so if a page does not exsist anymore instead of returning a 404 error it will ruturn a 200 code because the 404 page is there, does any one know a way round this please.

Best regards from alan

You can manually remove YOUR OWN pages from the google index. See also the information here:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/3.html#removed

P.S.: G-bot WILL recognise the redirected-to page is a 404, but it can take weeks or even months for the page to drop from the seacrh engine's results pages...

Hi thank you for the information, will look into it...
Best regards from Alan

Sorry for using this thread.

I've read a lot about poorly redirected 404 pages and nicely done 404 pages.

I've never undertstand this (they never gave examples of what they were talking about).

The line in the .htaccess shouldn't be the only thing needed?

ErrorDocument 404 /e_404.php

Or should I need to add to that e_404.php file something in the headers?

I would just use .htaccess to reroute the 404 pages to your root domain. Why waste teh traffic going to those old pages? Recapture it

Well, maybe an in-between page first, in case people were using their bookmarks/favourites. But if you think they will be happy being directed to the home page instantly, then why not? Only thing is that you want the SE to know the page no longer exists.

Also, my 404 page is kind of usefull... You have the information that the page no longer exists and you see the website map so the user will click on a link instead of going away thinking 'hey, the site no longer exists, now it's another thing'.

Yes, I saw it just now and it's very slick... Nice idea...