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Google has finally went cool and hip with their custom 404, playing catch up to Twitter and the likes, creating their own Google Broken Robot.
Try it out, go to google.com/rustybrick.
Twitter has the fail whale, which we see way too often. I believe many other Twitter-like companies have these 404 pages that are fun and creative.
I am just surprised Google doesn't put a search box on these pages.
Here is a larger picture of the custom 404:
I apologize to the person who sent this news to me on Twitter yesterday, I cannot find their tweet to give them credit. :(
Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.
Comments:
Jody Cake
03/02/2011 02:39 pm
so, so.. I'm a tad surprised they didn't add a google search box with a site search of google.com with the robot asking you if you would like him to help you find what you what you were possibly looking for.. BTW, www.google.com/android also brings up the broken robot, I'm a tad surprised they don't have a redirect set to send that 1 to android.com.
Search Engine
03/02/2011 04:31 pm
How do you make these kind of pages? is it a special kind of code?
Barry Schwartz
03/02/2011 04:32 pm
Really? Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_404
Anna Bourland
03/02/2011 04:48 pm
Jody Cake, agreed. Simple additions that make the page meaningful should be no-brainers. And wow on the android thing - that needs a redirect.
William Vicary
03/02/2011 04:58 pm
I'm very surprised Google doesn't have a more userfriendly 404 page, a page saying "error happened" is kind of useless when they can practically understand what you are searching for when you create a typo query in their search engine - wheres the cleverness Google? I mean heck at LEAST slap in a google custom search engine on the page like wowhead does: http://www.wowhead.com/search?q=rsted+pitchfork Poor show for a search engine! Poor show!
Simon Cole
03/03/2011 01:07 am
The Twitter Fail Whale page isn't a custom 404 page, it appears when their servers are overloaded. Their 404 page is pretty boring, but at least it's got a search box! http://twitter.com/custom404errorpage
Affordable-seo-services
03/03/2011 03:35 am
Google knows what people are searching for .they can built a advanced cutomized choice option webpage for 404 error page .
wholesale-restaurant-supplies
03/03/2011 06:19 am
Google can use some more options to make 404 error page really useful to make a real search .this is really crap
askbazar
03/03/2011 06:45 am
Google knows how to resolved 404 custom error.. this is interesting post..
idietcola
04/11/2011 10:39 pm
sums it up nicely...a pretty picture. i found some seo ppl - simply redirect all 404 traffic back to the homepage. maybe it can benefit seo/ serps... i just recall a few people have problems at host level with implementing 404 pages... or maybe i am mistaken...? anyways, thanks for the read and the think and the ggle seo round tbl i guess this is as funny as goog gets, or maybe that april fools i saw... a job post for a auto responder... my sides, nurse my sides iDCx
Michael
04/13/2013 02:34 pm
I like that error page
Michael
04/13/2013 02:36 pm
I like these error pages so much
Michael
04/13/2013 02:58 pm
I like these errors on them computer operating systems (os) and 404 not found errors on the internet so much because i love them all the world and back again