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The server does have one way of getting an idea of what you’re looking for: the URL you requested. I’ve seen 404 pages that search the site from a slug in the U

The server does have one way of getting an idea of what you’re looking for: the URL you requested. I’ve seen 404 pages that search the site from a slug in the URL and display the search results. There’s usually not enough in the URL for it to be useful, but I think once a site found the page I was looking for like that. Also, if the 404 link was from another site, now that you’re on the site with the missing page, you can at least click their navigation and try to navigate to the resource yourself. Like if you follow a link titled “buy red yarn” from knitting-patterns.com to buy-yarn.com/products/8221 and get a 404, you can click Store and search for “red” and thus find buy-yarn.com/store/2539.

Cushman 15y ago
But that's not a 404 Not Found. That's what I'm saying: 404 literally means the server has no idea what you want and no way to find it. If the server can figure out what you want from the URL, the proper response is a 301 or 302. If it can't figure out exactly what you want, but has some guesses, it should be 300 Multiple Choices. I'm not an HTTP hardass, but if we don't care about using the right response code then it might as well be 200, right? Because they're returning a resource for that URL, just a completely useless one.
- varikin 15y ago
  I would disagree. If I request twitter.com/userr but there is not account named "userr", should twitter decide I misspelled that and redirect me to "user" if that exists? I say no. First of all, a 404 response needs to be sent regardless so that a script can check for 404 and handle that as deemed appropriate. If I got a 301 or 302 to what the server thought was what I was looking for, the script won't know that the server is now guessing at what I wanted. I assume this is important for bots like the google crawler. Second, content with that 404 is very useful. It adds context to a user that cares. A well designed 404 will tell the user that the page/item/person/etc couldn't be found. Then it will offer an action such as suggestions of what it could be. Getting back to my "userr" example, there could be links to "user", "users", etc. There could be a prominent search feature or a way to report this to the company. Maybe a way to contact support, like a live chat widget. Further more, a 404 in your logs are very useful to look for what is commonly not found. Do people regularly try going to example.com/login even though your login page is at example.com/user_login? Apache access logs will show this very nicely and you can then decide to manually add a redirect.
  - Cushman 15y ago
    To your first point, I don't see the issue. Your crawler hits a URL and gets 301. It's either redirected to a URL already in its canonical database, and therefore knows that the redirected URL is garbage, or it gets something new-- congratulations! 404 is for a resource which can't be found; if the resource can be found, 404 is wrong for scripts as much as for users. Your second point is valid, but a little past the point, I think. My only actions after seeing a 404 are to check my spelling, hit back, close the tab, or start from the site root. Maybe it would be good for my browser to redirect to / or something by default, assuming there isn't a page loaded; I'm open to ideas. I'm just saying, it's never been helpful to me to download a 1.2mb transparent png that says "Sorry your browser doesn't know what 404 means." (Or another example ripped from real life: I literally just now hit a link to a video on a third-tier media site and was rewarded with a completely different video, with little text at the top that says "Error: Not found". This is what people really use custom 404s for.)

Cushman 15y ago

But that's not a 404 Not Found. That's what I'm saying: 404 literally means the server has no idea what you want and no way to find it. If the server can figure out what you want from the URL, the proper response is a 301 or 302. If it can't figure out exactly what you want, but has some guesses, it should be 300 Multiple Choices. I'm not an HTTP hardass, but if we don't care about using the right response code then it might as well be 200, right? Because they're returning a resource for that URL, just a completely useless one.

varikin 15y ago
I would disagree. If I request twitter.com/userr but there is not account named "userr", should twitter decide I misspelled that and redirect me to "user" if that exists? I say no. First of all, a 404 response needs to be sent regardless so that a script can check for 404 and handle that as deemed appropriate. If I got a 301 or 302 to what the server thought was what I was looking for, the script won't know that the server is now guessing at what I wanted. I assume this is important for bots like the google crawler. Second, content with that 404 is very useful. It adds context to a user that cares. A well designed 404 will tell the user that the page/item/person/etc couldn't be found. Then it will offer an action such as suggestions of what it could be. Getting back to my "userr" example, there could be links to "user", "users", etc. There could be a prominent search feature or a way to report this to the company. Maybe a way to contact support, like a live chat widget. Further more, a 404 in your logs are very useful to look for what is commonly not found. Do people regularly try going to example.com/login even though your login page is at example.com/user_login? Apache access logs will show this very nicely and you can then decide to manually add a redirect.
- Cushman 15y ago
  To your first point, I don't see the issue. Your crawler hits a URL and gets 301. It's either redirected to a URL already in its canonical database, and therefore knows that the redirected URL is garbage, or it gets something new-- congratulations! 404 is for a resource which can't be found; if the resource can be found, 404 is wrong for scripts as much as for users. Your second point is valid, but a little past the point, I think. My only actions after seeing a 404 are to check my spelling, hit back, close the tab, or start from the site root. Maybe it would be good for my browser to redirect to / or something by default, assuming there isn't a page loaded; I'm open to ideas. I'm just saying, it's never been helpful to me to download a 1.2mb transparent png that says "Sorry your browser doesn't know what 404 means." (Or another example ripped from real life: I literally just now hit a link to a video on a third-tier media site and was rewarded with a completely different video, with little text at the top that says "Error: Not found". This is what people really use custom 404s for.)