404 handling the right way

[AsafY]

Hi,

Currently when a page is not found I make a 301 redirect to a 404 page

should I really do a redirect or maybe a rewrite of the 404 page without redirection?

Thanks,

Asaf

[AlanMosley]

This is somthing i wondered about myself, i wanted a user frendly 404 page  and I wanted to return a 404 without a redirect. Getting both was a problem.

I use .net, how i achived this was making my 404 page return a 404, and used server.transfer("/folder/my404Page")

Not sure what technology you are using but for .net that will work fine.

[AsafY]

Thanks for the answer,

I'm using .net so I'll change the redirect to Server.Transfer, I think it looks better.

Do you think there is any difference from SEO perspective between the two methods ?

[AlanMosley]

I am not sure, as many sites do the redirect then the 404, I asume that search engines handle it ok, but I think it better to be safe. I like things to be done properly at my end i dont like to rely on others to fix the problem.

by the way I use
            Server.TransferRequest("/seo-perth/error404")

reather than just Server.Transfer it is a bit more correct