Trying to know what is 404 Error? Probably you have come across several websites and URLs displaying error 404s, while you accessing them from your android device, iPhone, PC, or laptop through browsers. In simple terms, 404 Error means that the web pages you are trying to access are not found, deleted, or moved away to new locations. Whatever search terms, keywords, or queries you put into your device’s searching box and hit the searching button, the browser starts to send these as HTTP Request to the servers which have relevant resources. The servers give you back the resources(ULRs of pages, posts, images, etc) relevant to your queries using various HTTP Status Codes. If the pages or posts are found and the servers are able to send them to the clients (browsers), then the servers return status code 200 OK. Status Code 200 OK indicates that the response has succeeded. In other words, the server has succeeded to forward the message to the browser against the relevant request.
But many times, it is not the case always. Sometimes it is found that the pages or posts that the servers are going to forward to the clients are not found, deleted, missing, non-existent, or have been moved to new locations without using proper URL redirect. The servers return a 404 return code to the browsers if the URLs of the relevant web resources are not found in their databases. Resources not available on the servers are linked to HTTP 404 not found. The pages, posts, and URLs linked to the 404 not found error must be fixed using a WordPress redirect plugin or they should be linked to a custom page to result in a better user experience.
Terms Alternative to 404 Errors
So far you have learned what is error 404 and why the code is returned to the browser by the server. Now, let’s know the terms alternative or similar to error 404. The similar words used for 404 errors are as follows:
- 404 page not found
- Error 404
- HTTP 404 not found
- HTTP Code 404
- Page 404
- Status Code 404 etc.
These are some of the terms alternative or similar to 404 error. As a webmaster. you can use anyone of these terms, but the term which is most familiar to all non-tech savvies are 404 page not found.
Level of 404 Errors( 404 Not Found)
You can encounter 404 error on many instances while you are going to access a certain web page or URL but it is not generated by the server. The response code 404s are returned by the server to the browser. Error 404 has various level of locations in the digital space, namely, in the web, websites, links, target and destinations. Each level of 404 does not play the same role when it comes to SEO.
Generally, 404 has the following level of locations:
- 404 Error in the Living Site
- 404 Error in the Old Links
- 404 Error caused by Invalid URLs
- System Generated 404 Error
404 Error in the Living Site: Such kind of error is most harmful for website because it results in the worst user experience and it is also annoying to the visitors. Suppose you are browsing over a live page or post but it results in 404 not found error. Such kind of occurrence is common in websites. Visitors click a link to go the destination but the destination URL has either moved or deleted.
Webmasters should regularly check their website to find out such kind of dead links if they exist. It also may be due to <href> attribute to multilingual site. Having too many 404 not found is not good for search engine and crawlers. It may negatively affect your site by limiting crawling budget.
404 Error in the Old Link: It also happens on those pages and posts which become outdated or have been removed from the site. Such kind of 404 not found may happen due to bookmarking of pages which are no longer available now. If such kind of pages provide backlinks and traffic, then you have to handle it as fast as possible.
Error 404 Caused by Invalid URLs: This another level of 404 not found error which happens if you insert a mistyped URL in a link or place a malformed URL conduct search on it. It is the easiest of all 404 pages because you can fix it just by correcting the link URL. If such kind of error happens to be found on your website, just check the URL and edit it correctly.
In case of internal link, there is no need to be worry as you can solve such kind error caused by 404. But if it is an incoming link pointing to your site, it needs to be corrected as quick as possible.
“A local file does not generate a 404 error, since that’s an HTTP error code. A HTTP server is needed to send HTTP things like errors.”
Stackoverflow.com
However, if the 404 not found error is caused by JavaScript, Embedded content or Flash files, it will not effect your site’s crawling and ranking as Googlebot can identify such kind of errors.
System Generated 404 Error: System generated 404 error is another level of occurrence that happens on many websites. This is also called systematic 404 not found. Such kind of happenings may be due to error codes in your site. The error may be generated by your site itself. Sometimes your XML Sitemap creates increasing 404 not found errors automatically by adding, deleting or modifying some characters in your URLs.
” If you found increasing numbers of 404 Not Found Errors on your site, look into the Codes and XML Sitemap. Such kind of systematic errors are often generated by the Codes of your website and Sitemap”-
Error 404s may affect crawling of your site by Google especially if there are too many numbers of pages.
Want to Test HTTP Status Code?
Want to check the HTTP Status Code for the live URLs of your posts and pages? Yes, you can check whether your server can successfully send an HTTP Response against a query send by the browser. There are many tools to test HTTP Response Code which you can use to check your server against a webpage or post.
Httpstatus.io is a great tool which you can run to test HTTP Status code for your site and URLs of posts and pages.
- Just go to the site httpstatus.io
- Locate the following box.
- Type the URL of your site, page or post in the box provided for the said purpose.
- Choose the user agent, namely, the browser from which you want to send the request.
The user agent may be search engine bots, mobile devices or desktop devices. Here search engine bots are Googlebot/2.1 used for Desktop and Smartphone.Also, you can choose others too if like to use. Choose a user agent of your choice and hit the ‘Check status‘ button marked above(3).
Once the test is completed, you can see the status code of your server on the URL put therein. If the server succeeds to find out the page, it returns a 200 status code. Returning 200 status code indicates that there is no problem to fetch the resource.
On the other hand, if the page or post is not available, deleted or moved away, the server returns a 404 error.
Whatever type of 404 error you encounter, you have to fix it to result in better user experience, crawling and indexing. Fixing error 404 is a must for every blogger and webmaster, regardless of its types and location.
