[jiggy2011]

Custom 404 page under usability? hmm.

I'm sure just about anyone who has used the web for any length of time has hit the standard apache "Not found" page hundreds of times now and pretty much knows what it means.

Custom 404 pages of often quite confusing as they will try to be clever and redirect you to other content that may be interesting. Sometimes these aren't clear and give the impression that the link was not broken and that this is where the site designer intended you to go which leaves you looking around the page for the content you thought you were going to get.

[bittermang]

"Custom 404 pages of often quite confusing as they will try to be clever and redirect you to other content that may be interesting."

I agree, however I also believe that is the intent of filing it under "usability". It isn't usability as you would commonly define it, a good UX, but rather keeping the UX of the site consistent across all states, even failure, and giving the user an entry point back in to the rest of the site. A default Apache 404 does not do this, it's just a flat white page, with your only option being to go back from whence you came. If that wasn't your site, then the perception is you've lost a potential visitor, and that potentially could've been avoided with a custom 404 page.

[caseysoftware]

I prefer the 404 pages that something to the effect of "Sorry, that is broken" and then include the results of a site search of the keywords or friendly url that was provided.

It's less confusing and keeps people on site.

[rplnt]

If you do this (which you should in my opinion), please return the 404 code. For example Facebook used to return 200 on error. Very confusing.

[caseysoftware]

Absolutely, I assumed that was a given.