custom 404 page returns 200 staus code

Hi,

I have a puzzling problem that I need some help with. My website is hosted on an IIS server and uses a custom 404 error page. The site is hosted by an ISP who set the custom page up for me.

The page works fine and displays every time a non-existent page is requested, but the staus code shows as 200 and not 404...

Does this mean it hasn't been set up properly in IIS or is it something else? My 404 page is classic asp so I could the 404 header myself, but I'd like to know what is causing this.

Any ideas?

DD

Are you talking about the server logfile showing a 200 rather than a 404? Perhaps the fact that your custom page works gets the 200 into the log, but I really don't know much about custom error pages and how they interact with the http response codes.

No, the logfile shows the 404 and my custom page is called and displayed correctly. When I check the headers using a tool like this one,

shttp://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp

the status code shows as 200 OK and not 404. I think is this is causing search engines to hold on to a large number of pages that no longer exist on my site becasue they get a 200 code and not a 404 when they are requested.