Search engine finds out the stuff by following the links from pages to pages. For this purpose Google bot visits the site and accumulate all the information: information about any new uploaded post, old post, broken link, incoming links to site or even any irrelevant link.
After collecting all this information Google bot report back to Google where after determine the quality. Thereafter instant information further processed for search indexing.
Sometimes when you have made a website and the delete it, now when Google bot will visit your site and crawl but it will not found your site. Now when a visitor will search this site, which is removed and not found by Google bot, then search engine will respond with error “404” or “File Not Found”. Following may other replies by search engine you will receive:
- “404 Error”
- “File Not Found”
- “HTTP 404”
- “Error 404 Not Found”
- “404 Page Not Found”
- “The requested URL was not found on this Server”
- “404 File or Director Not Found”
These were some words which we receive from search engine when search engine can’t find our requested website/URL address.
Common Causes of “404 Error”
- When thesearched URL doesn’t exists.
- When thesearched URL deleted.
- When required URL not available for the time being.
- When required URL renamed without redirecting from old URL to a new page.
- When searched URL moved from another server.
- When you written a wrong URL then also occur 404.
- When Web service extension or MIME type is disabled.
- When virtual directory is mapped to the root of a drive on another server.
- If Generative Rule on URL changed.
- Wrong Spell in Backlinks
- If required URL is prevented by DNS Setting
- If required URL is password-protected from Google bot Access
- If required URL is not in Google Index.
How to Fix 404 Errors?
Solution by Microsoft:
E-Marketing Solution to Fix 404 Error:
At end we summarized all our study, observation, discussions, deliberation and notes and concise them to a simple, easy and useful solution given as under.
- Press F-5 to reload/refresh the page, if error was temporarily occurred, it will fix the matter immediately and will show the required URL/Page.
- Check URL. Is there any spell mistake or you have typed a wrong URL. If yes then type the correct URL and go through your required page.
- If 404-error is still occurring, go to history of your browsing data and clear up your browser cookies. If you are using Google Chrome simply write “chrome://history/” in web address bar and clear cookies. (Don’t write inverted commas) just write simple chrome://history/
- If error removed after following the above mentioned three points then well, and if 404 Error is still occurring then use 301 redirect to remove the 404 error.
- Open Your Webmaster Tools and note down web page links which are error.
- Open your web service directory.
- Search file “.htaccess” > Edit the file
- Now enter new error URL, then new URL, as given here: redirect 301 /<oldURL>http://www.newURL.com/ Or redirect 301 /<mywebsite>http://www.myownsite.com/
- Similarly place all error URL in .htaccess> file to remove error.
- Save File and open your webmaster tools again in browser> crawl > all crawl errors > select all URLs > click marked as fixed.
- Your 404 error has been fixed. If not, will be fixed within 24 hours. Don’t take tension, now forget this problem.