HTTP Status Codes

When a request is made to your server for a page on your site (for instance, when a user accesses your page in a browser or when Googlebot crawls the page), your server returns an HTTP status code in response to the request.

This status code provides information about the status of the request. This status code gives browser/Googlebot information about your site and the requested page.

Some common status codes are:

* 200 - the server successfully returned the page
* 404 - the requested page doesn't exist
* 503 - the server is temporarily unavailable

Visit W3C page on HTTP status codes for more information


1xx (Provisional response)

Status codes that indicate a provisional response and require the requestor to take action to continue.

100 (Continue)
The requestor should continue with the request. The server returns this code to indicate that it has received the first part of a request and is waiting for the rest.
101 (Switching protocols)
The requestor has asked the server to switch protocols and the server is acknowledging that it will do so.

2xx (Successful)

Status codes that indicate that the server successfully processed the request.

200 (Successful)
The server successfully processed the request. Generally, this means that the server provided the requested page. If you see this status for your robots.txt file, it means that Googlebot retrieved it successfully.
204 (No content)
The server successfully processed the request, but isn't returning any content.
206 (Partial content)
The server successfully processed a partial GET request.

3xx (Redirected)

Further action is needed to fulfill the request. Often, these status codes are used for redirection. Google recommends that you use fewer than five redirects for each request. You can use Webmaster Tools to see if Googlebot is having trouble crawling your redirected pages. The Crawl errors page under Diagnostics lists URLs that Googlebot was unable to crawl due to redirect errors.

300 (Multiple choices) The server has several actions available based on the request. The server may choose an action based on the requestor (user agent) or the server may present a list so the requestor can choose an action.

4xx (Request error)
These status codes indicate that there was likely an error in the request which prevented the server from being able to process it.

400 (Bad request) The server didn't understand the syntax of the request.

5xx (Server error)
These status codes indicate that the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request.

500 (Internal server error) The server encountered an error and can't fulfill the request.

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