Comments on: 404 Errors: Report, monetize and analyse

By: Olaf

Olaf — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:16:22 +0000

Sure if you redirect your all expired URLs to your homepage, than is this not the best idea
The message in this tutorial is to use a 404 page

By: Olaf

Olaf — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:04:30 +0000

Hi,
it’s an option, but it depends on:

The non existing URL is removed (it’s better to redirect using a 301)
The URL never exists

For the last option a redirect to the homepage will not hurt, but don’t forget to use the canonical link element on your homepage

By: OnLine

OnLine — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:17:08 +0000

Hy
Is a good Ideea to redirect the non existed url (404 error) to the home page, via php?

By: Olaf

Olaf — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:17:18 +0000

Do you created the .htaccess file with the directives to the error document?

By: kenny

kenny — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 09:11:14 +0000

Help here!
I’ve done everything, the only thing that not working are 404.
when ever I type for example http://www.mysite.com/fgfgf and get standard error by browser not a 404 page.

Thanks…

By: Olaf

Olaf — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 06:51:54 +0000

I found this modified Google Analytics code snippet, which is able to track information about the HTTP_REFERER:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? " https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + " google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
try{
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxx-x");
pageTracker._trackPageview("/404.html?page=" + document.location.pathname + document.location.search + "&from=" + document.referrer);
} catch(err) {}
script>

More information about the snippet:
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=86927

By: Olaf

Olaf — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:18:56 +0000

Great that you like (and translated) the tutorial.

By: Olaf

Olaf — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:21:51 +0000

Hi,
You don’t need to set a header because Apache will send the header to the browser.
Of course you have to instruct the search engines to NOT index the error reporting script.

I using a similar script for finalwebsites.com and never found a file that doesn’t exists in the index.

By: HitMan

HitMan — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 10:22:52 +0000

You forgot something important:

Setting the header() via PHP to the appropriate error code! Without that, the 404 error pages would return an 200/ok header and counted as duplicated content…

With the correct headers, track and analysis is easier through tools like Google Webmaster tools.

By: Olaf

Olaf — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:45:47 +0000

Hi John,
right th idea from this article is based on this concept. Accept one thing, the strategy is to serve your visitors better content