HTTP Status Code 404: What Is the 404 "Not Found" Error? (2024)

Status Code 404: The “Not Found” Error

HTTP Status Code 404: The “Not Found” Error

This is a very common error. What happens here is that the URL being requested was simply not found.

It’s not true that all 404s are bad—this is actually a misconception.

It’s fine to serve a 404 if you simply don’t have that page, or if a user misspells a URL (you don’t have to redirect every conceivable URL). So, in many situations, it’s totally fine to serve a 404—Google won’t hurt you in this kind of situation.

You can actually solve this by having a great 404 page – something like “Sorry, the web page you requested was not found. Here are some of the most popular links”.

However, if you have authoritative web pages that are 404s, you should absolutely replace them. So, for example, if you have a URL that used to have a ton of links (or still has them), and now it’s serving error message 404, you want to do a 301 permanent redirect to the most relevant page you have on your site. You don’t want to leave that as it is.

If you’ve ever gotten the dreaded status code 404 error, and you have no idea what it is, then this guide is designed for you. It’ll quickly explain what a status code 404 error is, why it happens, and the best way to fix it.

BONUS: If you want to check your website’s response codes AND get a comprehensive SEO audit, you can use the tool below (it’s free):

The HTTP Protocol

Let’s talk about how the HTTP protocol works.

At its very foundation, the Internet is made up of two core things: clients and servers.

Any time you click on your browser, you are accessing the Internet through a web client. It may be Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer.

When you visit a website, you are making a request to a web server.

Facebook.com, ClickMinded.com, MarthaStewart.com/1525880/marthas-chocolate-chip-cookies, all of these sites have their own home address. It’s called an IP address.

Your home address might be 123 Main Street, New York, NY 10001, and Facebook’s address happens to be 66.220.144.0.

Whenever you visit a page on the web, you are requesting a whole bunch of documents from that website’s server. Maybe those documents are HTML, CSS, images, a PDF—whatever it is, the basic relationship stays the same: you (the client), make a request, and the website (the server) responds to that request.

The language you are using to make these requests is called the HTTP protocol. These protocols are really just standards that everyone on the web has agreed to. Just like English, Spanish and Chinese are all languages that have an understood protocol, HTTP is just a bunch of standards and an understood protocol.

See Also

HTTP Bad Request (400) vs Not Found (404): Which status code to use? – Josip Miskovic

There are a number of different web protocols out there – and you might be familiar with some of them:

• DNS – Domain Name System
• FTP – File Transfer Protocol
• HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol
• IRC – Internet Relay Chat Protocol
• SMTP – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
• SSL – Secure Sockets Layer

HTTP Status Codes

Now that we understand what the HTTP protocol is, let’s talk about HTTP status codes. Status codes let us know whether the HTTP request was a success, a failure, or something in between.

Let’s take a look at the five core status codes:

1. 1xx block: informational requests
2. 2xx block: successful requests
3. 3xx block: redirects
4. 4xx block: client errors
5. 5xx block: server errors

Some status codes are more common than others. For example, when you’re doing digital marketing, you’ll often come across status code 200, status code 301 and status code 404 – but you may never see status code 206 or 307.

Let’s briefly go over each status code block and what they mean.

1xx Status Codes

These are informational requests. The server hasn’t fully completed the request yet and it’s still processing the information. You will not see these codes often. They include:

• 100 – Continue
• 101 – Switching protocol
• 103 – Checkpoints

2xx Status Codes

These are successful requests, which means everything is okay. They include:

• 200 – OK (you will see this one the most)
• 201 – Created
• 202 – Accepted
• 205 – Reset Content
• 206 – Partial Content

3xx Status Codes

These are redirects. These are shown when you request an address, but you are sent somewhere else. These can be good or bad. They include:

• 301 – Moved Permanently
• 302 – Found
• 304 – Not Modified
• 305 – Use Proxy
• 307 – Temporary Redirect

4xx Status Codes

These are client errors. That means something went wrong with the request (client/user) and not the response (website/server). They include:

• 400 – Bad Request
• 401 – Unauthorized
• 403 – Forbidden
• 404 – Not Found
• 408 – Request Timeout
• 410 – Gone
• 429 – Too Many Requests

5xx Status Codes

These are server errors. That means something went wrong with the response (website/server) and not the request (client/user), which disables access to the requested page. They include:

• 500 – Internal Server Error
• 502 – Bad Gateway
• 503 – Service Unavailable
• 504 – Gateway Timeout

In Conclusion

Looking for more on a particular status code? We have a series of short guides on every HTTP response, so you can optimize your digital marketing strategy. Grab them here:

• The Complete Status Code Guide
• Status Code 200, Status Code 301, Status Code 302, Status Code 304
• Status Code 401, Status Code 403, Status Code 404, Status Code 410
• Status Code 429, Status Code 500, Status Code 503, Status Code 504