404 after 10 seconds do a redirect

[Dj Morri]

HI,

I was wondering the PROS and CONS on doing different redirects:

1.www.nytimes.com/whatever: NY times doesn't have the whatever page and they show users a proper 404 page


2. www.univision.com/whatever - Univision redirect users to the homepage because that page doesn't exist

3. www.aol.com/whatever - AOL show users a proper 404 wait 10 seconds and they do a redirect to the home page

What are the advantages or disadvantages on these 3 scenarios and which is the best ?

[AussieWebmaster]

the redirect to the homepage can cause loops which annoys users

[JohnW]

>Univision redirect users to the homepage because that page doesn't exist

In this case it is giving G a 404 and using javascript to redirect users.

>AOL show users a proper 404 wait 10 seconds and they do a redirect to the home page

Well what do you expect from AOL?

2 of the 3 are totally wrong and nytimes is done by-the-book. But even so, a 301 redirect to home page can sometimes be OK for a page not found, instead of a 404, as a way to harvest juice from misspelled links.

[Dj Morri]

Thank you John,

I understand that redirect users are not the best practice but could you tell me what is the problem with search engines ?

Why will affect to redirect users to home page instantly or after 10 seconds if the page really doesn't exist?

[JohnW]

The search engines don't follow these javascript redirects, they just see the 404s.