404 and SEO

[TimSki]

Hi All,

I have created a custom 404 page. I can now publixh URLs such as www.mydomain.com/England/MyHouse and then use code in the 404 page to interpret the URL, look up the parameters in the DB which relate to 'England' and 'MyHouse' and publish the relevant page.

This works great but it's very important that google picks up my link www.mydomain.com/England/MyHouse and indexes correctly.

So with SEO in mind should i...

1. Process everything within my custom 404 page
2. Only do the database lookup stuff in the 404 and then perform a server.transfer or server.execute

I've googled this subject a lot and it sems to suggest that (1) is preferable whereas (2) may cause some SEO issues ?

Do any of you experts have a view on this ? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[drhowarddrfine]

A 404 page that redirects to a valid link is not a 404 page. A 404 page is not indexed as a valid link if you return it as 404.

iow, this doesn't make sense. This also doesn't have anything to do with ASP.

[TimSki]

ok thanks but i'm confused as to why u think this has nothing to do with ASP, it's an ASP site. I'm referring to articles such as this which seems to be fairly common practice http://forums.aspfree.com/code-bank-...sp-157948.html. My question is simple whether to redirect/transfer or keep everything within the 404 ?