SEO Boost from 404 Plugin? Focus on humansJuly 1st, 2008
« Adding Print Capability to your Site with CSSFsockopen Power Plays »
Demo | Download | Installation | FAQ | Screenshots / Video
AskApache Google 404 is a must-have WordPress plugin that uses some ajax and a couple tricks to display a very helpful and SEO Error Page. The default displays Google Search Results for images, news, blogs, videos, web, custom search engine, and your own site.
Updated: 01/26/2008
Install Time: 10 seconds to 5 minutes
Install Difficulty: Super Easy
Demo 404 Error Page
Heads Up: I’ve been thinking about ways to improve this plugin for awhile now, and I’m going to be releasing an upgrade in the coming weeks! Any specific feature requests let me know~
Downloads
404.php Installation
- Upload
zip/tar.gzfile to the/wp-content/plugins/directory and unzip. - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Go to your Options Panel and open the “AA Google 404″ submenu.
/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=askapache-google-404.php - Enter in your Google Search API Key and hit the “Update Key” Button. (Get One)
- Add the code to your 404.php template page by including
<?php if(function_exists('aa_google_404'))aa_google_404();?>in your main content area.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a Google Account?
Yes.
Do I need a 404.php template file?
Only if you want to use this for your error page.
My 404.php page isn’t being served for 404 Not Found errors!?
Add ErrorDocument 404 /index.php?error=404 to your .htaccess file.
What is a Google API Key?
How do I get a Google API Key?
Google 404 Screenshots
Loading Video… [dl]
Plugin Configuration Panel
Search Entire Web
Search Blogs
Search Custom Search Engines
Search Images
Search Online Videos
More Info from Google
- AJAX Search API
- AJAX Search Wizards
- Developer Guide
- Code Samples
- Community Samples
- Knowledge Base
- AJAX APIs Blog
- Developer Forum
« Adding Print Capability to your Site with CSSFsockopen Power Plays »
Similar Reads
- Boost SEO, Drive Traffic with the 404 Error Page Plugin
- Updated: AskApache Search Engine Verify
- Search Engine Verify Plugin Updated
- Tips on Writing WordPress Plugins
- AskApache Search Engine Verify
- Advanced Google Analytics 404 Error Page
- SEO in Wordpress
- SEO Secrets of AskApache.com
- Updated: WordPress RewriteRules Viewer Plugin
Sponsors
Someone's Reading
- SEO Boost from Google 404 Plugin
- Speed Tips: Turn On Compression
- Sending POST form data with php CURL
- Troubleshooting Apache .htaccess Authentication
- Redirect index.php to root
- Language/Country specific Google Search Engine’s
- Apache Authentication in htaccess
- Firefox, Firebug, and yslow are REQUIRED
- Wget Trick to Download from Restrictive Sites
- Freshen your Anti-virus, Anti-Rootkits, and Anti-Spyware
Related Articles
- Boost SEO, Drive Traffic with the 404 Error Page Plugin
- Updated: AskApache Search Engine Verify
- Search Engine Verify Plugin Updated
Most Popular 100
- Abbr and Acronym examples
- Speed Up Sites with htaccess Caching
- SEO with Robots.txt
- Undetectable Sniffing On Ethernet
- Custom PHP.ini tips and tricks
Newest Posts
- The Final Countdown – Mario Bros Style
- Make Windows XP Blazingly Fast
- Student under Criminal Investigation for Allegedly Sending Email
Random
The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect. Tim Berners-Lee
It's very simple -
you read the protocol
and write the code.
-Bill Joy
HTML | DCMI | GRDDL | XOXO | XDMP | XFN | DOM | XML | XHTML 1.1 Strict | CSS 2.1 | W3C | WAI | DISA | ICSI | GIAC | SANS RR | GHOST
Authority: 110 ↑ TOPExcept where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, just credit with a link.
This site is not supported or endorsed by The Apache Software Foundation (ASF). All software and documentation produced by The ASF is licensed according to these terms. "Apache" is a trademark of The ASF.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/287660
Can we use that plugin to use Google Search API to find related post in each post based on the URL but display not videos, image but only some result of web.
Or everyone have another plugin or idea to do it.
I love it! Thanks
I still use this plugin on my blog, it was real easy to get going as I remember.
will try on my blog but I do have google Adsense on my blog so can I still use it?
Thanks for the info! This helped me out!
I love this plugin idea… but I can’t get it to work completely… It draws the green box but doesn’t fill in the google data. Any ideas where I’ve gone wrong.
Hey guys,
Love the 404 plugin. It was easy to install and simple to customize to match my wordpress theme.
I did find one small error in the version 4.6.2.2. In the line of PHP code given at the top of the settings page, there was a missing “?” just before the final “>”. Easy fix on this end, but I wanted to help out and say thanks at the same time.
The AAGoogle404 plugin starts its code in the footer of my site. I had to delete the “get_footer();” line of askapache-google-404.php so it wouldn’t enclose the AA404 within the footer. It’s okay, but sure would look better if the AA404 could be enclosed in the site theme’s page/post area instead of inside the footer.
I’m just not a good enough php coder to figure this one out. It’s still a WAY cool plugin even though it breaks my theme – and my workaround, though not pretty, is still completely functional.
This is very interesting plugin. I have never used this but I am soon going to use this. I am also going to write about this plugin on my blog.
My API key was preserved today when I upgraded to 4.6.2.2. I like the new settings page although I believe it should be in the Settings (not Tools) menu.
Also got it up and running again. In the older version a child-theme file I created for my 404 page was used and now it wasn’t. I just added the if () to the 404 of the theme and now it works.
Now for some feature requests of this great plugin:
* I’d like some help with disabling the tabs “Blog”, “Web”, “News”, “CSE” and “Local” again. If I just comment those lines out nothing appears.
* I’d also like to disable Video results. Google’s Best Guess is fine with me but since it takes a lot of space I can image people’d like to be able to disable that too.
* Then there’s a line “Other things to try:” which I cannot locate to translate.
* If there are no “Related articles” the title may be removed from the results or followed by a string that can be edited so I can say “Nothing to see here, mosy along” :-)
Ver 4.6.2.2 configuration page jumps straight to test results only way to add the Google API is to kill loading of the page. Results page content is kind of spilled all over the rest of the page.
Somehow the options (API key and co) don’t get saved on my blog (2.7.1) anymore. Happened with the last previous 3 updates of the plugin, even with the latest version 4.6 – any clue?
I just updated to 4.6 but still have the Google results below the page. It looks like a CSS/DIV thing. Anybody good at this? :-)
I just updated to 4.5.2.2. At first it did not work but after re-entering my API key it did. The results are not IN the page anymore but BELOW. Any idea how to fix this? See i.e.:
http://www.eenmanierom.nl/some-evernote-page-that-doesn‘t-exist/
I remember fiddling around for hours with something like this last time and the options of the plugin have changed so I though instead of fiddling several hours I’ll try my luck here first :-)
Thanks in advance,
Patrick Mackaaij
Installed on WordPress 2.71, not sure if it is working at 100%.
MY ERROR LOGS WERE SHOWING ABOUT 80 OF THIS ERROR:
[21-Feb-2009 19:29:29] WordPress database error Can't find FULLTEXT index matching the column list for query SELECT ID, post_title, post_content,MATCH (post_name, post_content) AGAINST ('images spring_flavour corner_bottom_r ight gif') AS score FROM wp_1_posts WHERE MATCH (post_name, post_content) AGAINST ('images spring_flavour corner_bottom_r ight gif') AND post_date <= '2009-02-21 19:29:29' AND (post_status IN ( 'publish', 'static' )) AND post_password ='' ORDER BY score DESC LIMIT 6 made by require, require_once, include, aa_google_404, aa_related_posts_404Great plugin, very good job!
I have a question… is there a way to change the “Related Pages to the Request” text and remove the “More Related Pages to the Request”?
I just installed the plugin. And I have a question :P
Is there a way to change the “Related Pages to the Request” text, and remove the “More Related Pages to the Request”? I couldn’t find out how to do it.
Take a look how it is looking at my blog: http://hikari.ws/404/mesario/voluntario/
Interesting, I’ll give a try.
Hi, I’ve installed the 404 plugin long back, everything was working good untill I updated my theme to the new version back in october 2008, now the plugin works good in the admin panel, but not in live 404 pages; please check this example and help me solving this out.
Hi there,
an option what NOT to search on google would be nice! it happend that the searchengine indexed old pages of a wiki and the webalizer directory. i’d like to hide this from the search result.
greetings
Легко читается, и в тоже время много новой, важной информации. Как раз то, что нужно!:)
How about integrating the Google enhanced 404 page widget? That would make an awesome addition to this plugin!
Here’s the intro: Make your 404 pages more useful
i’m not a programmer. so… it takes me few weeks googling to make this work on any server with php.
now, you can have this same thing even if you dont have wordpress.
http://wiki.dennyhalim.com/404-php
Hi askapache,
You have a great site, very it’s very informative! Thanks a lot!
When I first saw this plug in I thought “how cool, what a clever idea” but after thinking about it for a bit I concluded that this isn’t such a great idea after all… Why would you want to publicize and even encourage visitors to your site to go somewhere else when their intent was to visit your site?
Unless you rank in the top 10 or so I see this as being a counterproductive idea, just my 2 cents…
Gary
Hi,
Like your plugin.
Would be even better if it showed some adsense on top of it.
Like described here:
http://www.profitblogger.com/custom-google-search-results-page-on-your-wordpress-with-adsense-deluxe/
How would you do that?
hey man great plugin; i just wondering is it possible to integrate google adsense search instead of the ajax? or your adsense id?
Cheers
Donace
Excellent plugin, Google 404 is working fine on my wordpress blog version 2.6.2, I installed it without problems or any bugs, thanks for a great share and congrats on your plugin, it helps a lot for not found or deleted post to stay on google engine.
Regards,
Andy
Thanks for the sweet plugin.
However, it does not work properly with Wordpress 2.6.1.
The plugin activates appropriately and tries to work when I get 404s. But the only search tab that has any results is the CSE tab. Any idea why that would happen?
Great plug in guys! – I like it but have had a few challenges. I recently wrote a review of the plug in. Check it out HERE.
I think I will wait for the new version to come out after reading all those issues up there. cheers!
If you’re getting this error:
“Can’t find FULLTEXT index matching the column list for query”
You need to build a fulltext index, like this:
ALTER TABLE `wp_posts` ADD FULLTEXT (
`post_name` ,
`post_content`
)
- David
@ Falcon
I’m going to be releasing a nice upgrade for this plugin sometime in the 2 weeks. It really is an incredibly helpful plugin, but I need to make it easier for people to use. :)
The AskApache Google 404 v4.4 plugin does not seem to work in Wordpress 2.6. The plugin’s options are still there and so is preview of search output, but none of that output is ever displayed on the 404 error page.
This plugin was working great but has suddeny; become odd! I’ve tried deleting it completly and re-installing it but the following happens…
if i type /prince-discography/tester – the plug in works
but if i type in /tester – the plug in ignores the 404 error and seems to just show latest posts
any help welcome :)
AA 404 is very really great – for some reason deleted post id’s dont go to the 404 page (at least not with K2) i.e. go to my site in my sig (go there first) then add /?p=247 – its “just not found” – this is not only no good for the user / there is no handling of the metadata – google webmaster tools is crying about duplicate meta descriptions for any pages like this – meh
Man this is an amazing plugin :)
nice work around .. will simply increase the page visits by people who just keep stumbling upon 404 pages ..
I am wondering if this plugin can be used to create a site map
ie. instead of showing a site map written in php.. if google search results can be presented it will be wonderful
Hi, first of all thanks for the plugin, this one is really cool. I have some problems, though.. The first one is that the plugin expects the blog to be in the root directory, there is no option to change that (mine is under the “blog”-folder”..)
Second I get the weird message: WordPress database error: [Can't find FULLTEXT index matching the column list] Could you help here what columns are necessary to change?
Thanks alot!
I just installed it (in WP.2.5.1) and it works perfectly, and I’m very grateful for your plugin. There is just one minor snag, more aestetic than important..
At the top of the administrative part, after the phrase “SEO Boost from 404 Plugin? Focus on humans” and before the test-search box, there is a bunch of garbage code visible, looking like this (a snippet only):
It seems like it is trying to translate something into swedish (which is my language) and is failing miserably :)
However – everything works perfectly at the front end, and the documentation tells everything I need to know, so I don’t think there is any emergency – just wanted to let you know.
Thank you VERY much for this plugin! I hope visitors get alot better experience because of it and I truly believe they will. :)
Wish this had been around earlier and I do hope it becomes more prevalent!
Thanks a lot for this amazing plugin.
Best regards.
The problem I have it is that GOOGLE API doesn’t me using permalinks! It thinks it is another directory on the website :(
Hello to everybody.
Is this plugin processing only 404 errors?
How can I make it process other errors?
Thank u.
have no idea how this works… i have my blog hosted on another folder:
clinebellmusic.com/blog
does this mean i need to do something to the plugin so that it looks in the right directory? it just gives me a page not found:
Not Found
The requested URL /404/test-404-page-plugin-askapache-wordpress-plugin-search-engine.html was not found on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Please anyone help!!! :)
Nice plug-in, BUT it screws up my template. It moves the second sidebar down under the text for the plug-in which makes it look pretty strange. I have tried changing the CSS to correct for this, but my changes have done nothing.
So right now your plug-in is not usable. Undoubtedly some operator error somewhere, but I don’t know where so I have deactivated the plug-in until I hear a solution.
Nice plugin, thanks AskApache.
Hi,
You are using google Ajax search API, my question is can we use a single google api id for wordpress plugin development? A little off topic, but I will really appreciate your answer.
Just a question.
Can I cut off the results for the Web-Blog-video-immagine-cse ? i would like to delete that folder …
thanks
I love this plugin! Unfortunately, it doesn’t work “right out of the box” with my template. Nothing else has, so I know it isn’t because of the plugin – apparently, it’s just an odd template. The template didn’t come with its own 404 page, but I’ve tried customizing the plugin and now MOST of the results are showing up properly. Unfortunately, the “404″ part is still where the left sidebar should begin, and the sidebar content isn’t appearing ’til after the plugin-generated content is finished in the main container of the page.
I realize that might not make any sense, but you can see what I mean at http://technomom.com/404/test-404-page-plugin-askapache-wordpress-plugin-search-engine.html
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Cyn
Hi, tnks for the great plugin.
Just a question.
Can I cut off the results for the Web-Blog-video-immagine-cse ? i would like to delete that folder …
thanks
I upgraded to the latest 4.2 version and it stopped working. I cleared everything and installed from scratch and still no go. So I reinstalled 3.0 and it worked again. I don’t know what’s wrong.
AskApache,
I had the same problems as Jeffro Above. Unfortunately, I could not get it to work. I transitioned back to 4.1 and it works again.
Here is some troubleshooting info:
I’m running wordpress 2.3.2
The Xhtml appeared on my “404″ page with your version newest version of 4:
Wait a sec, I might be able to help…
That is I saw the Wait a sec, I might be able to help… and then…
Nothing loaded after that.
I tried a new Google API key twice, defaulted the options twice and that did not fix it.
When I reverted back to 4.1, it all worked again.
FYI,
J. Pisano -mustech.net
I have no idea how I fixed it except that I was just playing around trying various things and eventually, I clicked on the Reset Options to make the thing go back to default and it finally worked. Looks like for whatever reason, the api key had something to do with the problem. Looks like the whole key was not properly added into the plugin options even though I swear I copied and pasted the google API key about 100 times. At any rate, all is well it seems.
Hi,
thanx a lot, my 404 page now looks nicer than some of my normal pages :-)
I managed to upgrade your plugin but now the search does not function anymore. I’ve tried to get a new API key but even that doesn’t solve the problem. What else should I try>
Why did you decide to change the file names once again in this latest version. I’m always having to figure out which is which when I upgrade. Why can’t this be a simple overwrite process.
Hey Hi :) I just installed your 404 plugin – great work and thankyou, thankyou, thank you,
my second day at blogging and still trying to get my head around everything, found your spot during my travels and though I must say – most of what you have onyour iste flies right over my head, but still makes for very interesting reading, I’m sure I’m going to learn a lot here still especially the htaccess stuff and rewrites.
Melanie
thanks for 404 plugin!
This is fabulous, thank you!
Ive installed this on one of my friend’s blogs and he uses i3Theme 1.2 as a his wordpress theme and he uses
wp 2.3.1.I activated this plugin and put the right Google API code. I also edited the themes 404.php. But still when I press the Test Your 404 thing, it just show the frontpage but when i type in this
site.com/index.php?error=404then it shows the googles stuff…What did I do wrong?
I’m looking for a bit different functionality. We’re coming from Joomla, and the URLs they use lacked any title/stub at all (
/content/view/%article-id%) for example.So, the plugin isn’t going to help in terms of migrating from Joomla… since it’s just going to search the WordPress site for “
content view %article-id%” and come up with nothing.Is there a way to have it grab the Google Search Query from the referring URL? I’d much rather pass along what the user entered as their search query… as that’s more likely to dig up relevant content in the site itself.
i love it!
cheers!
:)
What exactly has changed in this latest release?
what a great plugin!
easy to install, easy to use, easy to configure, i’m using it now!
thank you…
Thanks! This is one plugin that I am going to share with all my readers
Google Custom Search: Custom Search Results Overlay
Once you upgrade WordPress past 2.1 you will need to edit a file to make sure your.
404 page is served correctly.
Open
/wp-includes/canonical.phpand do the following.Add
function redirect_canonical($requested_url=NULL, $do_redirect=true) { global $wp_rewrite, $posts, $is_IIS; if ( is_feed() || is_404() || is_trackback() || is_search() || is_comments_popup() || is_admin() || $is_IIS || ( isset($_POST) && count($_POST) ) || is_preview() )Add
if(false!==strpos($wpdb->escape(get_query_var('name')),'404')) return false;function redirect_guess_404_permalink() { global $wp_query, $wpdb; if ( !get_query_var('name') ) return false; if(false!==strpos($wpdb->escape(get_query_var('name')),'404')) return false; $where = "post_name LIKE '" . $wpdb->escape(get_query_var('name')) . "%'";No problemo. The ask apache plugin write I did is the second most popular article on my blog lol.
Thats a great list of helpful WordPress Plugins jeffro2pt0, thanks!
i really like to see a more general 404 script which do not require wp.
so that i can install it to any cms, not limited to wp.
tia.
Ok I noticed one thing at least did change from 2.x to 2.3, check out wp-includes/canonical.php it is trying to guess what you are looking for and redirects.
if ( is_404() ) { $redirect_url = redirect_guess_404_permalink(); }Just wanted to say that I updated my API key for this plugin and it appears to be working again.
I Upgraded yesterday to 2.3 and I didn’t even get a blip of a problem from this plugin, seriously this plugin doesn’t do any database queries or anything other than print out some javascript.
I can only suggest that you deactivate the plugin prior to upgrading, and then just re-install it. Who knows, their might even be some improvements to the plugin..
The other thing I can offer is make sure you are using a correct Google API key and not just mine ;)
I too am having the same exact problem. Looks like 2.3 has borked this plugin.
My problem is exactly same as the above!
Hi,
Thanks for this plugin.
But for some reason I’m only getting “loading…” and nothing else.
What could have I done wrong?
Hi there.
I’m having a small issue with your plug-in. The search results doesn’t seem to show. Any idea?
Also, how do i strip/replace the dashes from the search query?
Thanks for the excellent plugin.
Do you happen to know the output fields so I could add some css to the results list. Looks mad on a dark background.
Nice plugin I must add, worked out of the box. Cheers.
Thanks for the reply AskApache. So far, those who have read my post about this plugin have installed it and have been pleased with the results.
@ Jeffropt0
That is a really great question that I had to search awhile to find. The answer is because this Search API is still so cutting-edge new, Google is the only one making any money from these Ads. It is still pretty beta now, but in the future it will very likely have the features we want. It is against the TOS to remove the ads, and currently you cannot hook your own AdSense account into the Search API. You can however use css to re-position the sponsored links.. like:
.gsc-control .gsc-ad-box {padding-top:100px;}According to Does the AJAX Search API contain advertising?
I just had one question. On the first tab and the Web tab, there is a section on the bottom called Sponsored Links. Is this hooked into your own google adsense account? If not, who is getting the money in relation to these sponsored ads?
great plugin, thanks!
@ rilwis
Only if your 404.php page isn’t setup the way WordPress recommends. All you need to do is add this to the very top of
404.php.<?php ob_start(); header("HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found"); header("Status: 404 Not Found"); ?>If you use htaccess file like that, maybe your robots.txt file will be not reconized by Google (this will be error “status 200 is trying to send by not existing document”). I met this situation, and removed the code ErrorDocument in the htaccess file.
PS: This plugin sounds excellent. I will try to test on my site. Thank you very much.
Amazing work. Thanks.
@ pelf
This is not a bug, the plugin is purposefully very simple to avoid bugs.. (new plugins are in the works), the problem is occuring because for whatever reason, your site is not displaying the 404.php page for pages that are prefixed similar to
/2007/09/14/ANYTHING.Instead of redirecting to
/index.php?error=404it redirects to/index.php?year=2007&monthnum=09&day=14.You can try adding this to your root .htaccess file to fix it.
Hi, I have installed this plugin on my blog but for some reasons, I think it doesn’t work if your permalink has the “date” on it, for example on my blog.
(1) If I typed “http://chenpn.com/funny-people/”, the 404 page will load perfectly OK.
(2) But if I typed “http://chenpn.com/2007/09/14/funny-people/”, the 404 page won’t load. But unfortunately, my permalink has the date in it.
Is this a bug?
Great plugin, thanks. Have installed on my blog: angry people.
How do you change the search bar preset?
Mine currently shows [co.uk or query] rather than [angrypeople.co.uk or query].
Hey all,
This plugin is amazing! It needs more Press! I will be including this on my next list of must have wordpress plugins. Great job with this, I have it working on my site if anyone wants to see another site with it. Very easy to install. just go to mustech.net/anythinghere and it will pop up.