
When communicating via HTTP, a server is required to respond to a request, such as a web browser request for a web page, with a numeric response code and an optional, mandatory, or disallowed (based upon the status code) message. The web site hosting server will typically generate a "404 Not Found" web page when a user attempts to follow a broken or dead link hence the 404 error is one of the most recognizable errors encountered on the World Wide Web.

The 404 or Not Found error message is an HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested.
