A word or phrase can have a thousand meanings. One example to elaborate this is the use of “Excuse me” on the continent of North America. If someone from northern part of the continent don’t hear he might use “excuse me”, meaning the person whom they are talking with to repeat what they just said. Situation change completely if you are in the southern part of the continent. If you say, “excuse me” in the south it may call to evoke a blank stare. Any kind of non-verbal communication that doesn’t match with the message sent with words can cause misunderstanding and mix-up. Many webmasters set up sites in an incorrect manner and when a search engine bot or visitors reach the URL that doesn’t exist on the site. Visitors are redirected to a dedicated error page screening an error message 403 (forbidden) or 5xxx (server error) or 404 (not found) on their screen. Mostly the message in the header from the sites server can be a “200” ok message. This kind of message point toward that there isn’t problem even tough its there. Whenever a server error shows, the message sent from the serve shouldn’t be a 200 (ok) message. Its seen that sometime visitors from these inaccessible URL’s are redirected to the site’s homepage.

These kind of 200 (ok) messages can generate confusion. They can mean that non-existent pages may have been may have been removed from a web site may be kept in a search engine index, rather the fact that these pages shouldn’t be included and should be removed. If the correct 403 or 404 or 5xx message is sent back properly to the search engine these pages can be removed. Other confusing links found on the net are those that can’t be accessible unless someone in logged in to the site. If you are not login then you will be redirected to a login page. Sometime it may redirect you to a page that tells you about the authorization requirements for viewing the page. Search engines, which are unable to login also, receives message from the login or the authorization pages. These login or pages also shouldn’t be included in a search engine index.

Whenever a visitor visits a page showing a 404 error, but the header message sent from the server specify the page as 200 (ok) page, then these errors are called as “soft 404” pages. According to some researchers 404 shares more than twenty-five percent of the dead links on the net. To avoid miscommunication right error message should be sent. Responsibility is on the site owners to avoid any miscommunication happens between website, search engine and the visitor. Avoiding such errors is beneficial to the site owners, as these kind of dead links imprints a bad impression on the mind of the visitor. There are many applications, which try to recognize login pages, soft 404 errors by grouping together web pages from a site that shares many similarities. Grouping of these sites is done on the basis called “characteristics of the content of the web pages” in each group.