Happy 4.04 Day!

News from Google

Today is April 4th, which means that it’s 4.04 day — even in Europe where they switch their months and days around. That means it’s a perfect day to learn what a 404 status code is. Essentially, a 404 is a way for web server to return a “Page Not Found” error when a browser requests a web page that the web server doesn’t have.

If you have no idea what a status code is, start with these two posts about HTTP Headers and what they mean, followed by an introduction to common status codes used by web servers.

A few months ago, Maile Ohye organized a “404 week” on the Google webmaster blog. You can learn what a 404 is, how to make a 404 page more useful, why you should avoid “soft” or “crypto-404s”, plus read some Q&A about 404s and see examples of good 404 pages

There’s also a great feature in Google’s webmaster portal to show you who links to the 404s on your site.

Happy 404 day! Today is best celebrated by making 404 jokes with friends (”404 error: beer not found”), posting pictures of good 404 errors, and general merriment.

www.mattcutts.com

published @ April 6, 2009