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How are they going to do that? They tell your browser to 301 to the target URL - the browser is what notices the target URL is a 404, not Google, so Google wou
by ggrot 17y ago
How are they going to do that? They tell your browser to 301 to the target URL - the browser is what notices the target URL is a 404, not Google, so Google would have no way to know whether or not the target is gone. The target URLs could be private (only accessible to specific ips). Even if google crawled the page, they would have no way of knowing if your browser could reach it.
- moron4hire 17y agoThey wouldn't have any way to know for certain if you could get to it, but they would be able to tell for certain if you couldn't get to it, because they can't get to it from anywhere on their worldwide network. Something is better than nothing.
- spicyj 17y agoThe point, I think, is that you could still use the shortener to link to an intranet or similar site that is not available to the public web.