redirecting 404's ??

[darshanpm]

Hi everyone,

I am thinking of redirecting all 404 error pages to the homepage of the website automatically using some script....would like to know if it will have a good impact for google or not?

Thanks

[SEOpsychic]

though it's great to have a custom 404 page, i don't recommend you redirect pages automatically with that script to the homepage. the user has to know the link is not good or broken so the 404 is the chance to inform the user about this.

google recommends you think about the user first, before you think about the search engine. after all, you're optimizing your site to have more traffic (human beings or users) from the search engines.

in the 404 page. you have to include a link to your root or homepage and also provide links to important pages on your site or links related to the link that gave the 404 page.

google has a 404 widget you can use to embed 404 messages on your site. just go here: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/make-your-404-pages-more-useful.html

you can also use google webmaster to to find crawl errors on your site: go here:
googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/webmaster-tools-shows-crawl-error.html

also make sure your web server is configured to give a status code. check here: w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html and AVOID having your 404 page indexed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

conclusion: google frown on what you're asking about
all the best.

sorry, i'm not allowed to put links yet. so you have to follow the links manually.

[yukon]

Lol, Google doesn't frown on redirecting a 404.

Even If Google did frown on it, do you really care what they think (I don't)?

OP, here is the code I run on all my Wordpress sites, this is the only code inside my 404.php file.

This sends all 404's to your Index page.

<?php
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: ".get_bloginfo('url'));
exit();
?>