: .htaccess rule to redirect from 404 to search results When a user (or a bot) request on non existing page, I want to redirect him to the search results. I prefere to do it with the .htaccess

@Shelton105

The variable replacement will not work in ErrorDocument directive -- it will pass URL as is with no changes (maybe there are some special module that will perform such replacement -- I do not know).

If you want to use ErrorDocument directive, then you will have to grab the originally requested URL in the script itself (e.g. $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] in PHP). You can pass some special parameter to tell your 404 handler to execute such look up, e.g. ErrorDocument 404 /recherche?special-search=yes.

Another approach would be to use mod_rewrite, where such replacement is possible. For example:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

# redirect all requests to non-existing resources to special handler
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* /recherche?search_query=%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=404]


If you are using mod_rewrite already .. then such rule should be placed somewhere at the end of your rules list so it does not conflict with other rules.

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