HTTP Status codes explained

Different Types of HTTP Status Codes

What is an HTTP status code and why should you care about them, if you have a website or a blog?

Whenever you enter the address of a webpage in your browser’s address bar, the browser requests data from the server where the page is originally hosted. The web server returns the data but before the browser receives and renders the data at the clients end, an HTTP header is returned by the web server that has the status code of the given page.

In general, HTTP status codes are not meant for human visitors but both desktop and mobile browsers use this information to know more about the present condition of the webpage in question. If the page is in a healthy state, the HTTP status code returned should be a 200 OK. If the page has been moved to a new address, the HTTP status code should be 301 and so on.

There are lots of different HTTP status codes in place and the following table should explain what are the different types of HTTP header responses and their purpose in brief detail:

HTTP Status code	Type	Description	Link Juice
Redirected
300	Redirection	The server is waiting for an action from the user so that it can fetch a new resource	Depends
301*	Redirected	The old page has permanently moved to a new web address	Carried
302	Redirected	The old page has temporary moved to a new location but the user should continue using the old URL later	Not carried
303	Conditional redirection	The user is requested to do some action (GET request) so that the current page may redirect to another resource. The GET request
is conditional.	Not carried
304	Conditional redirection	The user has performed some action (conditional GET request) but the current page was not modified.	Not carried
305	Redirected	The user can only access the requested page using a proxy.	Not carried
306	Redirected	The server is fetching the page from another location but it will soon fetch the page from its older source. This status code is rarely used over a 302.	Not carried
Successful
200 **	Success	The server has processed the webpage correctly.	Carried
201	Success	The server has processed the requested page and created a new page or resource during the request.	Depends
202	Partial success	The server has received the request for the webpage and is currently processing it.	Carried
203	Partial success	The server has received the request for the webpage and it is waiting for a resource from another page.	Carried
204	Partial success	The server processed the request for the webpage but no content has been returned due to an error.	Carried
205	Partial success	Same as 204 but this time the server is waiting for the user to complete a specific action.	Carried
206	partial Success	The server received a partial GET request from the user.	Carried
Request Errors
400	Fail	Wrong syntax sent by the user	Not carried
401	Authentication required	The page is behind a login and/or requires an authentication from the user.	Not carried
403 ***	Forbidden	The server denied the request.	Not carried
404	Page does not exist	The requested page is not found on the server.	Not carried
405	Not allowed	The server is not allowing any request to the page for this user.	Not carried
406	Not allowed	The server can’t respond to the request at this time.	Not carried
407	Proxy required	The resource must be requested via a proxy.	Not carried
408	Timed out	The server timed out performing the request.	Not carried
409	Conflict	The user’s action has given rise to a conflict of resource.	Not carried
410 #	Permanently removed	The page has been permanently removed from the server.	Not carried
Server Errors
500	Internal Server error	The server is facing issues with some internal configuration and thus unable to fulfill the request at this time	Not carried
501	Not recognized	The server is not equipped to understand the type of request sent	Not carried
502	Bad gateway	While fulfilling the current request, the server received an incorrect response from its upstream server	Not carried
503	Server not available	The server is facing downtime or is currently unavailable	Not carried
504	Gateway timeout	The server is acting as a gateway or a proxy server to another resource and didnt received a timely request from the user	Not carried
505	Server does not support protocol	The server is not configured to support the HTTP protocol version that is used in the request	Not carried

* This is the only way to tell search engines that your old page has moved to a new location and the newer URL should be re-crawled and re-indexed. Only this server header preserves link juice and Google Pagerank but remember that if the page is part of a redirect chain, a considerable portion of the PR may be lost overtime.

** This should be normally the HTTP status code returned by a webpage if it’s static in nature and needs no GET request from the user.

*** If any of your pages return a 403 HTTP status code, it means that your web server denied the request of the page to Googlebot and human visitors. A possible case is when your web host is facing downtimes or it is blocking spiders and search bots from accessing some parts of your website, so you should be careful about it.

# This is similar to a 404 error but the standard practice is to 301 redirect the missing page to it’s newer location. If the page has no new location, it is recommended to return a 410. If you have temporarily removed the page from the server, use a 503 instead.

4G wait till early next year

4G wait till early next year

High-speed mobile and Internet services, using fourth-generation (4G) technology, will be rolled out only by early next year as operators are still in talks with equipment vendors.

Operators are expected to finalise contracts by the third quarter of 2011 (October-December) and start rolling out services by early 2012, "when consumer demand and operator ecosystem will be in place".

"By the end of this year, the entire ecosystem for effective rollout of 4G in India will be in place, including handsets, data cards and networks," said Ying Weimin, president of GSM, UMT and LTE network at Huawei.

Long-term evolution (LTE) technology, or 4G, allows data downloads at higher speeds. Essentially, a four-minute song can be downloaded in four seconds.

Beginning with metros and high revenue earning circles, 4G is expected to spread to other towns and cities and attain pan-India coverage over a period of two years.

"The business model that is emerging is that operators will sign up 2-3 equipment vendors and give rollout contracts for different telecom circles," said an operator gearing up to launch 4G. The potential deal size is expected to range between $250 million and $4 billion for a single contract.

According to industry experts, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries-owned Infotel, being the only pan-India 4G player, is expected to set the trend in service rollout and tariffs.

"All operators are waiting to see how Infotel forges alliances with vendors and deploys the new technology," experts said.

Infotel has won licences in 22 circles. Others to bag licences are Aircel (8), Bharti Airtel and Qualcomm (4), Delhi-based Tikona (5) and UK-based Augere (1).

Mukesh Ambani is likely to align Infotel's rollout with the global 4G road map, under which countries such as the US, South Africa and Latin America will go live between 2011-end and mid-2012, experts said.

Though the migration of millions of mobile users to the 4G network will initially be slow because of the lack of affordable LTE-enabled handsets and devices, industry players are optimistic about a fast uptake.

"Prices will gradually decrease as more subscribers opt for LTE. We experienced a surge in 2G and 3G mobile telephony with reduction in handset prices. The same can be expected of LTE in a shorter period because of the rapidly maturing ecosystem," said Mark Atkinson, head of global LTE sales at Nokia Siemens Network.