How do SEs see 404 redirection

[nims]

Hi,

In my site I have given my members an option to have a customized url like -www.mysite.com/membername

Now for each member I create a folder "membername" with his images in that. Since there is no index.php ( or similar ) file in that folder, it creates 404 error when someone visits this url and I use this 404 error to redirect or create a page for that user.

Now my question is, how do Search Engines see this redirection from 404. Will this effect SE rankings etc for that page or for that matter will I be able to list www.mysite.com/membername url in SERPs ?

[dcz]

404 are understood as 404 by bots, so every time the http header will 404 bots will "think" the page really does not exist, even though they'd be able to read and follow links they'd find on a personal 404 page.

According to what you say, you could try the following :

use a special and non existing folder to filter cases like users/ to end up with -www.example.com/users/membername, so that you could use mod rewrite in a simple way to have those working.

[nims]

Well, I agree but I already have members who are using urls like -www.site.com/member I cannot change this now.

Is there any other way I can do it.
At present I use

[dcz]

Well, the thing is you cannot access sql data in .htaccess.

You could try with this rewriterule if you don't want to add a folder level :

[nims]

Thanks I will try this and report.

[nims]

Ok its working but there is a slight problem.
When I open -www.site.com/member it works fine but when I open -www.site.com/member/ it doesnot open. Pls note the last trailing slash.

Also how do I test the headers, I mean how can I test if its working thru htaccess or my other script. I can delete my older script but still I wud like to have some other method in which I can see headers being sent.

[dcz]

http://web-sniffer.net/

[dcz]

[nims]

Great works perfect !!!