| Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | verdecove | 10/20/09 5:40 PM | This is my first experience with a web presence and an own online store. I have set it up and ran it for a few days in test mode online and somehow it happend Google picked the site up and indexed it. About two weeks later my store was ready for real |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Michael Martinez | 10/20/09 9:28 PM | It depends on the software you're using for your online store. As long as there are no surviving links for the deleted URLs you should be okay. Over time they will indeed fall out of the system. But you may have to implement 301-redirects for the d |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Phil Payne | 10/21/09 1:19 AM | In theory a 404 error should persist for ever unless you do something about it. RFC 2616 Section 10 applies: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html "The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | squibble | 10/21/09 3:26 AM | I dont think google makes much distinction between 410 and 404 pages, unless there is updated information ? ...Google treats a 404 HTTP status code (page not found, but it may reappear) and a 410 HTTP status code (page not found, and it’s gone forev |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Phil Payne | 10/21/09 3:38 AM | "Sebastian has posted a good interview with the Sitemaps team. The most useful tidbit (which I didn’t know until now) is that Google treats a 404 HTTP status code (page not found, but it may reappear) and a 410 HTTP status code (page not found, and i |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | squibble | 10/21/09 3:51 AM | I have tried it. The results of which I have noted. Here is google's status code - updated 9/30/2009 404 (Not found) The server can't find the requested page. For instance, the server often returns this code if the request is for a page that doe |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Phil Payne | 10/21/09 4:06 AM | I'm missing something here. I don't really need to read Google's interpretation of RFC 2616 - I can read the original. And nowhere in Google's "interpretation" does it now say that 404 and 410 are treated the same. In fact that is notable by its o |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | squibble | 10/21/09 4:17 AM | I have tried it. Have you got any information from google that says they are treated very differently in this 'page not found' context? as the google sources that I refer to suggest that google considers them to be similar > It is similar to a 404 ( |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Phil Payne | 10/21/09 4:38 AM | I can't be bothered to search for it now - I may try later. But it was a Google employee back in the September/October debate last year who posted a "Sorry - I just checked with the team and they are treated differently." As RFC 2616 requires. I t |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | squibble | 10/21/09 5:21 AM | I have kept an open mind on this for the last 8 weeks until I completed my testing which I consider to be suitable for my purpose. Please review my posts - I have previously suggested a 404 and 410. Now that my testing is at an end, I shall no longer |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Phil Payne | 10/21/09 7:08 AM | In this context Susan is wrong when she writes: "This is incorrect. A 301 means that a page has been moved to a new location; a 404 means that that page no longer exists. (FYI this is an Internet standard, not just specific to Google.)" That is NOT |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | verdecove | 10/21/09 7:10 AM | Thank you guys for all your posts and information. This gives me something to get started with to do some more studying on this subject since I'm fairly new to all of this. It looks like my post has started a really interesting discussion. Once again |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Phil Payne | 10/21/09 7:14 AM | It's only relevant to large e-commerce sites and they will be doing that anyway. If a user comes in for /sony_cybershot_t77.html and that product is no longer available the last thing you want to send is a 410. To a bot, perhaps - but to a user you |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | squibble | 10/21/09 7:23 AM | Okay, Susan Moskwa is wrong... You have not posted any up to date information which clearly states that google treats 404 and 410 differently for page not found. As this topic has been 'answered' I will end here and hopefully people can see the inf |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Phil Payne | 10/21/09 7:34 AM | She's human. Hell, even I'm wrong sometimes. She said: ".. a 404 means that that page no longer exists .." But that's NOT what RFC 2616 says. Are you having trouble reading Section 10.4.5 ? http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | squibble | 10/21/09 7:47 AM | I am not interested in your link, I am interested in how google treats page not found responses. |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Phil Payne | 10/27/09 3:03 AM | It's not "my link" - it's RFC 2616, which even Susan Moskwa acknowledges as the "laws of the Internet". And there are other search engines besides Google, and other users besides search engines. Conforming to the RFCs is never a bad idea if you're |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | JohnMu | 10/27/09 3:17 AM | Hi guys I followed up on the 404 vs 410 thing with the team here. As mentioned by some others here & elsewhere, we have generally been treating them the same in the past. However, after looking at how webmasters use them in practice we are now trea |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | Phil Payne | 10/27/09 3:36 AM | Of course, in the commercial world, if you're going to go to the trouble of providing a code other than the default 404 for a page, you'd probably find a 301 better - especially if you have a superseding page. It's a shame to send a potential custom |
| Re: Will 404 Not Found error always occur when I change the inventory and delete products/web pages? | squibble | 10/27/09 3:53 AM | Thank you for a definite response on this query. I also thought it was not worth rewriting a server (at possible extra cost) to produce 410 responses. |