Re: servers that don't return a 404 for "not found"
Aaron Nabil (nabil@teleport.com)
Mon, 14 Oct 1996 05:59:43 -0700 (PDT)
Benjamin Franz writes...
> On Mon, 14 Oct 1996, Aaron Nabil wrote:
> > The seem to be a proliferation of "clever" web administrators who
> > replace their system 404 not found page with something that doesn't
> > actually return a 404 code. Try an altavista search for title:"not found"
> > and then go look at some of those pages.
>
> Hmmmm...You are putting system operators in a bind here. The use of
> re-directs (code 301s/302s) for non-existent pages is very important to
> system operators because of the habit of search engines returning links to
> pages that no longer exist for several months after the pages are removed.
Oops, I should have been clearer.
I have no problem with redirects as answers to queries for non-existant
documents.
I have a big problem with 200's on "404 Not Found" pages. Especially
dynamic-content pages. If I get a 200 on a query, I don't have any way
of distinguishing that type of reply from real content, save maybe a
title of "not found".
-a