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
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301-redirect

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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?

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