Wouldn't you just put your

Megan — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:06:00 +0000

Wouldn't you just put your index page in as your error 404 doc? You can specify a custom 404 page in your .htaccess like this:

ErrorDocument 404 /404.php

I think redirecting 404's to the home page is a bad idea mainly because it's a problem for users who click on those links. All of a sudden they are presented with your home page and not the page they thought they were gettting. Better to provide an actual 404 page that explains the problem and then provides links to other appropriate pages on your site.

I think Google themselves would really prefer that you actually send a 404 error code so they know that the page no longer exists.

What you should also do is sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and check your 404 pages. If you're getting a lot of hits to a certain url, 301 redirect it to an appropriate existing page on your site and/or contact the linking page(s) and ask them to change the link. Webmaster Tools also has code for a 404 widget that can help make your 404 page more useful.

Or are you getting a huge amount of badly written inbound urls? Any reason why that's happening?

Here are a few more blog posts on 404's from Google:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=active&rls=en&hs=coQ&q=+site:goo...

Wilky wrote:

Usually I have only one or two error 404 for months to redirect: I wouldn't have to have a penalty for duplicate pages, isn't it?

I'm not sure what you mean by this??

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