Google’s Martin Splitt addressed an inquiry regarding the response of Googlebot to a pre-render meta tag with a value indicating a 404 page not found. This is a noteworthy question as it pertains to a non-standard meta element, which is not frequently encountered. Understanding how to handle such situations is valuable.
The individual posing the question sought insights into Google’s potential reaction to a meta tag in the head section labeled “prerender-status-code” with a value of “404,” indicating that the requested page is not found.
The question was raised by an individual named Martin, and the response came from Martin Splitt of Google.
Here is the question :
“Martin is asking: What does Googlebot do when it finds <meta name=”prerender-status-code” content=”404″> ?”
Martin Splitt answered:
“Well Martin, that’s easy to say, Googlebot currently ignores that status code.
I guess this is coming from a single page application that is client-side rendered and you want to avoid soft-404s, in that case consider adding <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”> or redirect to a page where the server responds with the 404 status code.
For more information on that see our documentation at developers.google.com/search.”
What is Prerender-Status-Code?
The meta element known as prerender-status-code (sometimes colloquially called a meta tag) lacks official recognition as it is not documented by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C.org), the authoritative body for establishing HTML standards.
Considered more of a proprietary or non-standard meta element, these elements don’t adhere to the official W3C HTML specifications. Non-standard meta elements can be browser-specific or designed for specific purposes, leading to potential lack of support across various browsers and search engines. Consequently, their behavior may exhibit inconsistency across different browser environments.
The meta element prerender-status-code serves as an illustration of a non-standard meta element, and notably, it lacks support from Google.
Similarly, another non-standard meta element unsupported by Google is the meta keywords element. With no mention in the W3C.org and never being part of the official HTML standards, this meta element was introduced by search engines in the 1990s.
On the other hand, the X-UA-Compatible meta element is an instance of a browser-specific non-standard meta element, specifically associated with the older Internet Explorer web browser.
Here is an example of the X-UA-Compatible meta element:
<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=edge”>
Martin’s response regarding the prerender-status-code meta element highlights the key point that numerous non-standard meta elements lack support from Google.
Additionally, it underscores the fact that not all meta tags are included in the official HTML standards available at the World Wide Web Consortium website (W3C.org). Those meta elements not officially recognized are referred to as non-standard meta elements.
For further details on supported meta tags, one can refer to Google’s support page, last updated on December 1, 2023.
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