My store not returning true 404

[ebaobao]

Hello,

This url doesn't exists, so when I enter this into the browser, zen directs me to the page not found page which is correct.

http://www.usifloral.com/browseprodu...1180-Pink.HTML

But if I checked the header being returned using webtools it is returning a "302 Found" status code.

Why?

[Kim]

Does it return a proper 404 if you don't use an SEO URL mod?

[ebaobao]

Kim,
I have not used a SEO URL mod, ever. That link is just one of the old links that google kept in their index for the old shopping cart software on a different host. When I switch my website to a different zen cart now on a different host, I have never install any SEO URL mod. I was just testing how the response was because I wanted to make sure I return a proper 404 for pages not found. The funny thing is that google reports this as 404in the webmaster tools but I don't know what could have changed that now makes it report a different header status using other web tools.

I should clarify that when I refer to webtools, I'm referring to http://webtools.live2support.com/header.php and not google webmaster tools.

[ebaobao]

Bump.

When I put this in .htaccess

redirect 404 http://www.usifloral.com/index.php?m...page_not_found

and comment out:

ErrorDocument 404 http://www.usifloral.com/index.php?m...page_not_found

the header status 404 returns correctly now using that same url that returned 302 earlier. Seems like a solution, but then I can't have my custom 404 page displayed so thats not good. Anyone have any suggestions that can help me out? Thanks.

[ebaobao]

Hello,
Just to keep it simple. If I type in the browser (IE):

http://www.usifloral.com/test

It brings me to the customize 404 page (which is good).

If I type in the same url to check the header status here:
http://webtools.live2support.com/header.php

It tells me that the header status being return is 302. Anyone know why this is happening and how I can fix?

[yellow1912]

Actually, Zen does not take care of returning you from /test to the customized 404 page. So it's probably something you put into your htaccess file.

You will have to check your rule in the htaccess file and see what happens there.

[ebaobao]

Hello Yellow,
Thanks for your reply. I did some more research and here is what I found. The server actually returns to replies. Here is what I got when I did the test, #1 response 302 and then #2 response is 404:

#1 Server Response: http://www.usifloral.com/test
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:19:19 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8i DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
Location: http://www.usifloral.com/index.php?m...page_not_found
Content-Length: 422
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Redirect Target: http://www.usifloral.com/index.php?m...page_not_found

#2 Server Response: http://www.usifloral.com/index.php?m...page_not_found
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:19:19 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.9 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8i DAV/2 mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.6
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

So does this mean that the search engine is actually taking in the 404 or do they read the first response?