Problems With Server Header Status Codes

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 by Mistlee


Can't see any images? - Click To View!




Click to Play

Using Google Alerts
Mike McDonald has another helpful tip for all you Web site owners out there. First of all, Mike throws out a reminder for how to use link and site operators through...

Recent Articles

Windows Vista SP1 Warrants Caution
If you're thinking about upgrading to Windows Vista SP1, you may want to think again. Although it was supposed to address users' and administrators' complaints about Vista, SP1 is itself creating enough problems to...

IP Address As Personal Information
In some very interesting news coming out of the European Union, the IP Address that you use should be regarded as "personal information" meaning it now has the potential to fall under the safeguards...

Router Down: Some Days You Just Can't Win
Some days you just can't win. One of my clients (you know who you are) had such a day yesterday. It started with doing some reprogramming of a Fortinet WiFi router.

We Need A More Flexible Sense Of Ethics In...
One of my greatest mentors in information security is the CISO of a major educational institution; he has served the information security community well, with honor and...


04.16.08

Problems With Server Header Status Codes

By Navneet Kaushal

Members at Webmaster World discusses about the problem of server header status codes. It is one of those topics that aren't touched often!

According to the Webmasters World thread, almost every server can return an incorrect HTTP status in the server header. But, Microsoft IIS (Internet Information Service) has a particularly long history of such errors been shown. For example:

Tried to set up a "custom 404" page, so your users get a friendly human like message.

When a bad URL is requested, the server responds with a 302 redirect to the custom error page (often called 404.html for example). Then the custom message is returned with a 200 OK http status.

The user agent is never informed by the server that the status of the requested URL should be 404. As a result a '302 temporary redirect' is issued. Unless the server informs the crawler about the correct status of requested URL, it won't matter what error code is written in the web page. Crawlers (including Googlebot) communicate with servers and not individual web pages.

Some of the interesting threads at Webmasters World:

"Any bad URL can be indexed according to the standard handling of an internal 302 redirect:

Become An Inbox Favorite -
Download The Free White Paper

a) The content of the redirect's target URL is indexed.

b) With the original URL as the location.

So the bad URLs can start piling up as duplicate URLs for the same exact content."

Microsoft's .NET platform and IIS are particularly susceptible to this kind of errors. Inspite of the fact that the default error handling returns a correct 404 status code, still it is the way by which custom error messages are set up that pose the problem.

"For the IIS user, there is one other caution I should mention about 404 handling. If you are using .NET, then there are two levels of error handling: at the IIS level and at the .NET level. It is also common to find that only one of these two levels is set up correctly. So when you're stress testing your URLs, try a bad URL with an .asp (.aspx) extension, and also try a bad url with a .htm extension.

I felt it was important to focus on this issue in a dedicated thread - it's coming up much too often, both in threads here and in the sites of new clients that I evaluate.

The problem is by no means confined to IIS, either. For example, I see it on Apache servers running Tomcat for .jsp pages."

Comments


About the Author:
Nav is the founder and CEO of Page Traffic, a premier search engine company known for its assured SEO service, web design and development, copywriting and full time SEO professionals.

Navneet has wide experience in natural search engine optimization, internet marketing and PPC campaigns. He is a prolific writer and his articles can be found in the "Best Articles" section of many websites and article banks. As a search engine analyst , he has over 9 years of experience and his knowledge is in application here.
About SysAdminNews
SysAdminNews is a collection of articles, news and commentary designed to keep system administrators informed about the latest trends impacting their profession. Updates and Advice for System Administrators





SysAdminNews is brought to you by:

SecurityConfig.com NetworkingFiles.com
NetworkNewz.com WebProASP.com
SysAdminNews.com SQLProNews.com
ITcertificationNews.com SysAdminNews.com
LinuxProNews.com WirelessProNews.com
CProgrammingTrends.com ITManagementNews.com





-- SysAdminNews is an iEntry, Inc. publication --
iEntry, Inc. 2549 Richmond Rd. Lexington KY, 40509
2008 iEntry, Inc.  All Rights Reserved   Privacy Policy   Legal

archives | advertising info | news headlines | free newsletters | comments/feedback | submit article


Unsubscribe from SysAdminNews.
To unsubscribe from SysAdminNews or any other iEntry publication, simply send an email request to: support@ientry.com
Database Forum Updates and Advice for System Administrators SysAdminNews News Archives About Us Feedback SysAdminNews.com About Article Archive News Downloads WebProWorld Forums iEntry Advertise Contact Jayde

5 comments:

RoseKeys said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
viji said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

not too bad article which passed on a tolerable information.awaiting for more updates along these lines.
Self Employment Tax
Tax Preparation Services
Tax Accountant
Tax Advisor

seo company in mumbai said...

I feel happy about & learning more about this blog. Keep sharing your information regularly for my future reference. This content creates a new hope and inspiration within me. Thanks for sharing blog like this. The information which you have provided is better than another blog.
SEO Company in India