Google’s Custom 404 Page Widget – Another Winner by Google
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Google’s new custom 404 page widget is just what many webmaster have been waiting for. I know it has peaked my interest a bit with this new option and increased functionality.
What is a 404 page?
When a user clicks a broken link or mistypes a URL at your website, you don’t want to lose the user. The best way to keep the user at your site after he hits an unknown page is through the use of a Custom 404 page.
A custom 404 page should do several things. First, it should tell the visitor that the page they are trying to find doesn’t exist, and do it in a way that’s easy to understand. The custom 404 page should also have the same type of navigation as the rest of your website. It should have the same look and feel as the rest of your website, as well.
A good custom 404 page will offer links to popular pages at your website, and even a link to your homepage. A custom 404 page should also provide a way for readers to let you know about a broken link on your site.
Google’s custom 404 page widget
Google’s new custom 404 page widget adds some dynamic new functionality to the traditional custom 404 page. This widget allows you, first of all, to offer your readers a search box on your 404 page. In addition, this widget tries to provide your reader with alternatives for URLs that aren’t correct. So if the reader lands on an incorrect page, Google will try to provide “correct” alternatives for then and in turn, this makes it much less likely that the reader will navigate somewhere else to find the information they’re looking for.
These search features help keep your reader at your website.
Note: The Google custom 404 page widget is still in the experimental stage. At this time, it won’t provide alternative URL suggestions, closest match suggestions, or sitemap suggestions. As time goes on, I fully expect that Google will make some changes and updates to its custom 404 page widget.
To get started with your own custom 404 widget from Google, check out the custom 404 page information in the Google help center through your Google Webmaster account at http://www.google.com/webmasters/
So what are your thoughts of Googles latest little tool?
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Google’s Custom 404 Page Widget – Another Winner by GooglePosted: 06 Sep 2008 10:35 PM CDT
“In addition, this widget tries to provide your reader with alternatives for URLs that aren’t correct.”
Aren’t correct? What kind of use would that be?
“At this time, it won’t provide alternative URL suggestions, closest match suggestions, or sitemap suggestions.”
So which one is it then? Does it provide alternative suggestions or not?
Looking at it right now inside of Webmaster Tools and it says that it tries to provide them. Might want to double check your post before you hit publish.
No that is pretty much exactly what I wanted to say. It provides alternatives for the urls that are not correct. So if there is a URL that is NOT correct, google will provide an alternative for it.
It’s been a long time since my visit to Google webmaster, I never know what’s going on now to my site. Thanks for the reminder, I will check mine now
Looks like it could be a good idea, but after trying it out on my site, it just added a search bar, which it already has.
Possibilities are good, however at this time I would simply edit the 404 manually.
I agree, but it looks promising.
I think it will be a great tool when it’s complete. But for now, I’ll stick to my already custom page instead, which by the way, already has a search box on it.
I have to admit: the suggestion of similar pages is indeed interesting!
Andre Thomass last blog post..The True Secret To Big Traffic
Just a quick note on the suggestions: While we try to provide suggestions where possible, sometimes we just don’t know of any similarly names URLs
— for example if you test your 404 page with http://example.com/missing-page or any other made-up term which doesn’t match the rest of your site, we’ll have trouble finding anything matching.
A great way to keep record of these 404s is to track them with Google Analytics (maybe you’re already using it for the rest of your site?): http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=86927 . If you notice that users are always hitting a few wrong URLs, set up a redirect and send them to the right ones.
JohnMus last blog post..Seeing nofollow links in Google Chrome
I like the idea of tracking the 404 pages and using a redirect for frequently used wrong URLs; I had not considered that before. Thanks JohnMu
This sounds really cool. I like the idea of a search box on a 404 page. Do you really think this is worth the effort?
Do many people even go to the 404 pages?
I don’t think people naturally “go” to the 404 page. They kind of wind up there by accident. For my site I hacked my 404 page to load the location query string into a search box, perform a search, then display the page. I think this is what Google tries to do as well. The difference is that if certain pages aren’t indexed by Google they won’t appear.
My search box fails if the search term isn’t in my database (which is a problem when combining legacy and database-driven sites). All the more reason to move it all into the db.
Look like it could be useful, in the future…as it stands now, not so much. My buddy ben over at benjaminpatton.com did a post about custom 404 pages, his was pretty slick. I don’t know if he is using google with it or not though.
Normal Joes last blog post..IMwithJoe.com Monthly Update
Google’s engineer are genius….
Always thinking of new things to do with the net to control the net.
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I think it’s great that they’re developing this. I’ll keep my custom page for now but I can see using this feature down the line.