A Better 404 Page
Google's got a new little widget one can embed in a custom 404 error page that looks like this. Its cool because in addition to a search box, it claims to be able to provide the user the closest matching page in cases of typos. I am playing around with it for several of my sites, though I don't think it is an option for the blogs -- I am pretty sure there is no way to implement a custom 404 page on a typepad search. By the way, the Google dashboard / webmaster tools site is pretty helpful, particularly if you are really interested in where and how your search traffic is coming in. I implemented a new sitemap for each of my blogs and uploaded them to google via the webmaster tools site and saw an immediate increase in search hits.
EconStudent:
Could you post the link as a screen shot? Clicking on it takes me to where I could sign up for google dashboard, it doesn't actually show me what it looks like. Thanks.
November 13, 2008, 11:28 amSmartDogs:
I think you posted the wrong link. This goes to a google admin page, not a sample 404 page. For others who come here, try THIS link for a more detailed explaining and screen shot: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/webmaster-tools-shows-crawl-error.html
November 13, 2008, 7:32 pm