In this blog, we’ve previously discussed matters relating to custom 404 pages in Fixing 404 File Not Found frustrations (SEM 101), returning the correct HTTP status code with your custom 404 pages in 301 to 404 gets 200 – oops! (From the Forums), and using Bing toolkits to develop such pages in Create custom 404 error webpages for IIS.

Earlier this week we announced one of the results of our recent collaboration with Cal Evans, PHP guru, in our post Announcing the Bing Search Library for PHP. Well, there’s more to announce. The Bing Developer Center blog today announced that we have worked with Cal to distribute a new plug-in for WordPress webmasters, which offers a new way to handle dead URL queries. Instead of sending out a generic and unhelpful “404 File not found” error, the plug-in parses the dead URL string into keywords and passes them along to the Bing API to create a customized 404 error page that helps users find matching pages on the WordPress site through smarter search engine results page (SERP) suggestions in Bing.

For more information on this cool new plug-in, including code samples, download links, and video tutorials, check out the Developer Center post Bing 404 plug-in for WordPress. Enjoy!

I’ll be back again soon…

— Rick DeJarnette, Bing Webmaster Center