Googlebot's reaction to unsupported metatags: we study using prerender-status-code as an example

The article begins by asking Google's Martin Splitt about Googlebot's response to a prerender-status-code meta tag with a value of "404", indicating that the requested page was not found. Martin replied that Googlebot currently ignores this status code. If it is used by a single-page application that is rendered on the client side and you want to avoid soft 404s, then it is worth addingor redirect to a page where the server responds with a 404 status code.

"Martin is asking: What does Googlebot do when it finds?" Martin Splitt answered: "Well Martin, that's easy to say, Googlebot currently ignores that status code."

🚀 The prerender-status-code meta tag is unofficial and has no documentation on W3C.org, where official HTML standards are created. It is more of a custom or non-standard meta-element. Non-standard meta-elements are not part of the official W3C HTML specifications. Some are browser-specific or designed for specific purposes. They may not be supported by different browsers or search engines, and their behavior may not be consistent across browsers.

• 📌 Custom meta elements may not be supported by different browsers or search engines.
• 📌 Googlebot currently ignores the prerender-status-code meta tag.
• 📌 Not every meta tag is part of the official HTML standards found on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C.org) website.