HTTP Status Codes and Search Engines

Server Status code are the number values of the HTTP request. It is important to understand the different server status code that will be useful in the SEO perspective and how search engines bots react to the same.

Before getting into the server status codes it is important to understand the difference between HTTP /1.0 and HTTP/ 1.1 protocols. The HTTP/1.0 protocol has been stunningly successful and as a measure of its popularity, HTTP accounted for about 75% of Internet backbone traffic. In spite of its success, however, HTTP/1.0 is widely understood to have numerous flaws. To overcome the flaws in HTTP/1.0 the HTTP-Working Group (HTTP-WG) developed an improved protocol, known as HTTP/1.1. This specification states the various requirements for clients, proxies, servers and later became an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Draft Standard. The server status code tends to differ based on the version of the HTTP.

To identify the HTTP status there are various Server Header Checker tools available. In the server header you can find the version of the HTTP with its status code on the requested file. Please find the below screenshot with different HTTP versions,

Now let us discuss about the different HTTP server status code,

• 200 OK – This is the standard response for a successful HTTP request. The request was fulfilled.
• 301 Moved Permanently – The requested data has been assigned with a new URL and the change is permanent.

Search Engine Friendly redirection which will help to transfer the complete credibility of a URL when transferred.

• 302 Found – In HTTP/1.0 specification the client is required to perform a temporary redirect (Originally called as “Moved Temporarily”), popular browsers implemented this as 303 See Other. In 303, the correct response can be found under a different URI. To disambiguate between the two, HTTP/1.1 added 303 and 307 status code.
• 307 Temporary Redirect – In HTTP/1.1 specification the requested resource resides in a different URI temporarily and the redirection may be altered on occasion. The client should continue to use the request-URI for future reference.

Let us see how search engines treat a temporary redirection from the domain A.com to B.com. By definition, the web server on A.com could always change its mind and show content on A.com again. Search Engines display the content of B.com with the URL A.com

Real Time Example: Let us consider IBM.com redirection implementation, you can find the header status response of the website in the below screenshot,



Let us see how top 3 search engines react to this temporary redirection implementation,
Google – List the content from destination URL http://www.ibm.com/us/en with source URL http://www.ibm.com/.

Alternatively the destination URL will not be indexed by Google. Please refer its index status in the below screenshot,

Yahoo and Bing – The search engines index both the destination URL as well as the source URL in case of a temporary redirection.

• 404 Page Not Found – The most popular server status code and it explains that the server has not found anything matching the request. To retain the visitors we often go with implementing custom 404 pages for the website.
  If all goes on well with the implementation of custom 404 pages search engines is never an issue. But in some cases if you screw up the implementation and the header of the custom 404 page returns 200 OK. Search engines would index your 404 pages if linked from outside as a result of typo error. It is very important to check the HTTP response when customizing and ensure it returns 404.
  Read more on Custom 404 page and Search Engines

• 503 Service Unavailable – This means that the server is unable to handle the request due to temporary overloading or maintenance of the server.
  If your website is in the maintenance mode make sure to return 503 server status code. This code tells search engines that the website is unable to serve the content but informs search engines that it has to come back later.
  During temporary overloading you can stop search engines from taking up your bandwidth by passing them a 503 server status code which informs them to come back later. This will stop search engines indexing the website at busy times.
  Read more on Importance of 503 status code Search Engines

Please add your comments on any other server status code if you feel will be important in an SEO perspective and how crawlers treat them.

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Categories : SEO Tags : custom 404, HTTP, Server Status