301 redirect to 404 page or set status code to 404 and stay on page?

Posted by WPRookie82 on Pro Webmasters See other posts from Pro Webmasters or by WPRookie82
Published on 2014-08-21T07:42:47Z Indexed on 2014/08/21 10:30 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 537

Filed under:

301-redirect

|

404

I have a number of pages on my website that only administrators can access and access to these pages is given if a querystring value if found and correctly set. For example:

http://www.mydomain.com/show-daily-statistics?key=abc

The above link will show the content of the page but anything else such as the below will not:

http://www.mydomain.com/show-daily-statistics

Now I was thinking about what to do if search engines and/or non-admin users somehow land on these hidden pages.

I can of course either change the status code of the page to 404 or else 301 redirect to:

http://www.mydomain.com/404-error

What's the best solution in respect to Google and SEO?

© Pro Webmasters or respective owner

Related posts about 301-redirect

.htaccess file size causes 500 Internal Server Error

as seen on Pro Webmasters - Search for 'Pro Webmasters'
As soon as my .htaccess goes over approx 8410 bytes, I get a 500 Internal Server Error. I don't think this is due to a bad redirect, as I have experimented with redirects in the .htaccess and then with just text that is commented out #. (no actual commands in the .htaccess file) Is there anything… >>> More
Apache 301 redirect

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have inherited a server with a couple of domains on it. The website was reworked within the last two years and I am trying to oblige a request by staff to get a redirect to work properly (if it can given the default structure). So right now on the server I have a redirect that takes every 301 and… >>> More
Sitewide 301 Redirect with a subset of different redirects

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am trying to make a sitewide 301 redirect for a site with around 400 pages but also have a subset of about 10 individual pages that don't follow the sitewide redirect and should point somewhere else. Any ideas how to format such redirect rules so the sitewide redirect doesnt conflict with the… >>> More
301 Redirect and query strings

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am looking to create a 301 redirect based purely on a query string see b OLD URL: olddomain.com/?pc=/product/9999 New URL: newurl.php?var=yup My normal way of doing this would be redirect 301 pc=/product/9999 newurl.php?var=yup But this time I am trying to match a URL that that only contains… >>> More
.htaccess 301 redirect without GET var

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, For a website I'm currently working on we're redirecting our old URL's permanently to new ones like this: Redirect 301 /oldfile.php http://www.site.com/show/newurl Now I come across this situation in which the old url has a get var like: Redirect 301 /oldfile.php?var=name http://www.site.com/show/newurl This… >>> More

Related posts about 404

ubuntu/apt-get update said "Failed to Fetch http:// .... 404 not found"

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hi all, I'm trying to run apt-get update on ubuntu 9.10 I've configured my proxy server and I can access the internet without any problem: /etc/apt# wget "http://www.google.com" Resolving (...) Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 292 [text/html] Saving to: `index.html' 100%[=================================================================================================================================>]… >>> More
Cannot update, apt-get cannot fetch index files

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
I have a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 from the iso 'ubuntu-11.10-desktop-amd64.iso'. I installed this in VMWare Fusion 4.1.1 running on OSX 10.7.3. When setting up the VM, I allowed easy install to take care of creating my user and installing VMWare tools. No problems during installation, everything… >>> More
Protecting Apache with Fail2Ban

as seen on Pro Webmasters - Search for 'Pro Webmasters'
Having checked my Apache logs for the last two days I have noticed several attempts to access URLs such as /phpmyadmin, /phpldapadmin: 121.14.241.135 - - [09/Jun/2012:04:37:35 +0100] "GET /w00tw00t.at.blackhats.romanian.anti-sec:) HTTP/1.1" 404 415 "-" "ZmEu" 121.14.241.135 - - [09/Jun/2012:04:37:35… >>> More
Django flatpages raising 404 when DEBUG is False (404 and 500 templates exist)

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm using Django 1.1.1 stable. When DEBUG is set to True Django flatpages works correctly; when DEBUG is False every flatpage I try to access raises a custom 404 error (my error template is obviously working correctly). Searching around on the internet suggests creating 404 and 500 templates which… >>> More
x.gif in Apache logs

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I manage a Django site where we host the media on a subdomain. There shouldn't be any requests for media to the main domain. However I keep seeing these requests for "x.gif" showing up in the access logs on the domain that's handled by WSGI (not the media domain). Can anyone explain what this is… >>> More