The Importance Of HTTP Codes
Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Saturday, August 22, 2009 Leave a comment
HTTP codes are one of those areas that most people don’t want to know about. The problem is, those codes can ultimately affect how your pages are seen by the search engines. It is handy to have at the very least an overview of the codes and how they affect your site, your visitors and the search engines.
JustSearch in the UK has a handy little post on the subject and goes into a little more detail than I will. Having a passing knowledge of code groups is a good start and can give you idea of what problems your site may have. there are five code levels and each covers a different area of your web site. HTTP is basic terms are codes sent to a browser when a page is called. These codes tell the browsers the status of that page what action or error message needs to be taken. In summary, the codes are:
1xx Informational – This code provides information to the browser and handles the general processing of pages.
2xx Success – Your request to load a page for example has been successful.
3xx Redirection – The page requested has a redirection instruction for example, a 302 is a temporary move whilst a 301 is a permanent move
4xx Client Error – These are the errors you need to be looking for. An example is the 404 page not found error.
5xx Server Error – These errors are found when your server has gone down for any reason.
We use the 3xx Redirection codes a lot particularly when moving or deleting pages. The 4xx and 5xx codes are the ones you really need to keep a look out for. If the search engine comes across a 410 code for example, this tells the search engine the page ‘has gone’. If the search engine sees this code, it may well delete the page from its index.
These codes can have serious implications to the search engine optimization process so watch them carefully. Any repeated 4xx and 5xx codes need to be investigated and processes put in place to prevent them where possible.
Leave a comment Category: Webmaster Tools
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