{"id":447,"date":"2012-10-18T14:26:10","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T18:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inmotionhosting.com\/support\/2012\/10\/18\/using-google-custom-404-page-widget\/"},"modified":"2021-08-16T23:31:53","modified_gmt":"2021-08-17T03:31:53","slug":"using-google-custom-404-page-widget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inmotionhosting.com\/support\/website\/google-tools\/using-google-custom-404-page-widget\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Google’s custom 404 page widget"},"content":{"rendered":"
In this article we\u2019ll discuss why and how to setup the Google custom 404 error page widget on your website. If you happened to have read our previous article on 404 error not found pages<\/a>, it was discussed how handling 404 requests dynamically can become problematic.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
This is because if you continually hit your database dynamically to see if a page exists or not, it can lead to a lot of resource usage from your website, and can result in a slower experience for your site visitors.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
You can create a custom 404 error page<\/a> that is purely HTML code, and then set a 404 error page via .htaccess<\/a> to help cut down on the resource usage required for fulfilling requests for pages that don\u2019t exist.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Typically most websites will have their entire contents crawled by Google, as they index your website to add it to their search engine results.\u00a0Using the Google custom 404 error page widget in conjunction with a static 404 error page, will allow users to still easily find possibly related content on your website taking advantage of Google\u2019s index of your site, instead of relying heavily on your own database.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The first thing you\u2019d want to do is generate your Google custom 404 error page widget code from the following URL:<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
<\/a>Customizing your custom Google 404 page widget<\/a><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
\n
    \n
  1. From the Select language:<\/strong> drop-down, select your language.
    \"select-language\"<\/a>\n
    <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  2. Hightlight the JavaScript code displayed, right-click and select Copy<\/strong>, or hit (Ctrl-C)<\/strong>.\"copy-javascript\"<\/a>\n
    <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  3. Next, you\u2019ll want to paste (Ctrl-V)<\/strong> the copied JavaScript code into your custom 404 HTML page in-between the <body> and <\/body> tags.\n

    You can review our article on creating a custom 404 error page<\/a>, if you\u2019re unsure of how you would creating or editing this file.<\/p>\n

    You also want to make sure that you\u2019re replacing the code you copied from Google, for the following:<\/p>\n

    var GOOG_FIXURL_SITE = \u2018https:\/\/www.example.com\u2019<\/p>\n

    So that it uses your actual domain name instead of example.com<\/strong>, then just click on Save Changes<\/strong> if you\u2019re using the cPanel File Manager.\"text-editor-save-changes\"<\/a><\/p>\n

  4. Now if someone tried to access a page for instance on your domain such as \/HowToContactUs<\/strong> that didn\u2019t exist, they\u2019ll be presented a Google search box for your website with those words already typed in. If Google has indexed a page of yours that mentions how to contact you, chances are the visitor will be able to find this using the Google search, instead of the visitor just being serverd a generic messages asking them to try a different page. \"google-search\"<\/a>\n
    <\/div>\n

    \"google-search-results\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    <\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n

    Now that you\u2019ve successfully setup the Google custom 404 page widget, you might wish to also adjust the style of it to better fit in with the style of your website. You can do this by modifying the CSS code which is exaplained in Google\u2019s customizing the 404 widget<\/a> page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In this article we\u2019ll discuss why and how to setup the Google custom 404 error page widget on your website. If you happened to have read our previous article on 404 error not found pages, it was discussed how handling 404 requests dynamically can become problematic. \u00a0 This is because if you continually hit your Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57014,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4322],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-tools"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUsing Google's custom 404 page widget | InMotion Hosting<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In this article we'll discuss why and how to setup the Google custom 404 error page widget on your website to still allow related content to be found on your site, without taxing the server.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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