which is better, a 404 error page or redirecting to the front page

Question

I was under the impression that 404 redirects to the front page is considered bad. all websites should have a 404 page. But at the same time I notice alot of people in forums that want their site to redirect to front page when a 404 is called. which is better. Having a 404 error page or redirecting to the front page

Answer 1

The best is a custom 404 page, totally integrated into your design / site, with perhaps some hints parsed from the url which pages might be of interest, and at least a searchform. And do let it provide a 404-header. For some reason, a lot of peope don't get that while sending a 404 you can still sent a fully fledged webpage.

Answer 2

Definitely have a 404 page that also sends a 404 header.

• It tells bots when URLs are outdated

• It saves you from problems with duplicate content (that search engines frown upon)

• It shows users when their URLs are outdated or they typed something wrongly

people want to "keep" incoming visitors by redirecting them to the front page. I'd say this creates more annoyance than good, because it doesn't give incoming users a clue about the resource they were looking for. A good 404 page, possibly with intelligent links ("were you looking for...?") and a site map, is the best option.

Answer 3

This is going to be a little subjective, I'd think, but here's my opinion.

A 404 Error serves a purpose: to tell the user that the page was not found. Redirecting to the front page suggests that's where the link was supposed to go.

As a user, if I hit a 404, I know the page is missing. If its a site in which I have a vested interest (say, my bank's self-service web portal, or SO, or some such) I can let someone know there's a problem.

If, instead, I'm re-directed to the main page, I tend to assume that's done on purpose and that the page isn't meant to exist, or someone already knows about the problem.

Answer 4

Minimize the 404 errors. If some resource doesn't exist anymore, use 410 Gone. A properly designed site doesn't need to take out of commission URLs. If due to errors in the past you need to, set up a redirect to the new location.

Now the only 404s that should be left are mistakes entering direct address and bad links from outside (and possibly removed resources that can't know/don't want to reveal they existed). Sending a 404 error page is better than a 30x with redirect to the homepage because:

• It's more robot friendly. The spiders won't cache the resource thinking it's still valid.
• You can still include a link to the homepage in the 404 error page (in fact, you should).