404's?

[monkeyman]

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Was looking through my webalizer and stats and noticed that my 404 page is one of the most requested pages (7957 for September!).

I've checked my site and only found about 10 errors.

My question is, could the 404 page be in the search engines?

Or if say an image is missing would this cause webalizer to report a 404?
(I was using a spacer file but specified the wrong directory where it was.)

I have analog too, and there's only a handful of errors in there.

Anyone have any ideas?

[Consultant]

Hi monkeyman, as far as I can recall from webserver classes, 404 is an error code, not a page.

Webservers redirect the failed request to a predefined 'error' page, however, in the case of missing graphics (usually 1X1 spacers in my cases), the request is logged as a 404 error.

The page is never returned, as its the graphic call which flags the error. Webalizer will interpret the missing graphics as 404 'pages' even though its actually a 404 'error'

It appears as though the 'missing' graphic is the cause of your 404s, and no 'page not found' page will appear in the serps.

I bet you've moved the spacer now?

[monkeyman]

Cheers Consultant!

Yep - the graphic is now in it's rightful home

It's confusing that certain log stats record 404 'pages' and others 404 'errors'.

Aah, well, sorted now. Thanks again!