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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-07T21:06:52+00:00

My server is configured to send all 404 errors to a custom 404 error

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My server is configured to send all 404 errors to a custom 404 error page – this works fine for people misspelling my URL. If they didn’t misspell the URL but instead the article wasn’t found in the DB (rs.EOF), because it had possibly been deleted prior – what would be the best way to deal with it?

At the moment, if a record/article cannot be found, it just shows a little message saying “Article cannot be found”, it doesn’t redirect anywhere. I’m now curious if this would cause any problems with SEO. I’m thinking maybe my app needs to tell Google that the URL doesn’t work anymore, am I right?

If there’s no matching blog article in the DB, should I be redirecting the user to my 404 page? If so, how can I achieve this? Is it with a custom header status code? Or do I carry on showing my little message?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I believe 410 Gone is the correct redirect for a page that no longer exists.
    I would redirect to a friendly page explaining to any real user that the info is no longer available.

    Redirect to the page by using a bit of code when you see the article has been removed from the database.

    <%@ Language=VBScript %> 
<% 
Response.Status="410 Gone" 
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www.url.com/article_is_gone.html" 
%>
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