IndustryError! Error! Google’s New Fail Page Features Broken Googlebot

Error! Error! Google's New Fail Page Features Broken Googlebot

Google is serving a new custom 404 page when you stumble across a page that doesn’t exist. It tells you: “404. That’s an error. The requested URL was not found on this server. That’s all we know.” Also, Googlebot is in pieces, no doubt symbolic of a broken link.

google-404-error.png

Geeky fun no doubt. But interestingly, Google breaks one of its own rules for creating useful 404 pages: to “help people find the information they’re looking for, as well as providing other helpful content and encouraging them to explore your site further.”

Also interesting that if you type in google.com/android, you’d think Google would redirect users to http://www.google.com/mobile/android/, or offer some sort of guidance to help people find what they were looking for. But no.

Google introduced another custom page — the “Whale Fail” — back in December on Google Books,” a play on Twitter’s famous (and all too familiar) “whale fail.”

google-books-whale-fail.jpg

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