Do You Have A Useful 404 Page?

November 19, 2007

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Crashing into a 404 page not found result when arriving from a link where the visitor expected to find useful content could make or break that person's expectations of that site. We have several creative epithets and colorful metaphors we apply to sites that vomit back a useless 404 result, especially when the preview of the link in either a search engine's results, or comments on another site, lead us to believe the destination will be worth the visit.

Other people run into that frustration, and according to monitoring site Webmasters can do a better job with their 404 pages. Instead of just bringing the visit to an abrupt end, like Match.com does with a blank page, the 404 offers an opportunity to provide the visitor with a reason to stay on the site and look around rather than hitting the Back button automatically.

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