404s

[jackson992]

I was talking to a freind of mine last night and we got on to the subject of 404s. Currently all my 404s are redirected to my home page. I get a lot of 404s and I hate to lose the traffic. Comments or Opinions?

[vicyankees]

You might be better off creating a custom 404 page that has links to some of the more popular/primary content sections and a message letting the user know the page no longer exists. a quick redirect can degrade user experience.

[Chris_D]

Currently all my 404s are redirected to my home page

Technically - thats the wrong way to do it. A redirection is a http header 301 or 302. A page not found is a http header 404

I explained this in an earlier post.....

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=76988#post76988

[jackson992]

In your opinion will people follow the links if I for instance display my nav there?

[Chris_D]

Yes - if they mistype the URL for example.

Why do they get 404's? Maybe look at the cause?

[jackson992]

Hi Chris:

My server was recently hacked so the host shut my sites down. I had planned to switch hosts but unfortunately didn't get everything saved first.