#2636 – A lot of 404

 Hi there.

I've got A LOT of 404 (2000+) from the past 2 month. I looked at the documentation, and found out, that I dont have any internal 404.
I really dont know, how I get so many 404 from outside. And I dont know what to do about them. Some of them has no relation at all to my site (I can see WP-LOGIN eg, prob a Hacker-Bot), but some of them have relevance, I just dont know who created them, how they got there, or what I should do about it. Just leave them, if its not an important link? (Im affraid I'll get punished by google, with all these 404)

I've attached a Screenshot from some of the 404, so you can see, what kind of urls, and maybe give some adwise.

Sincerely,
Martin

Happy to hear that I cant be punished, when from another site :D

Some of them might be from my old site, yes. But I cant imagine that all of them are. I cant recognize many of the URLS.

This one is fairly new, and HAVENT been on the old site (Its about the ZIKA virus, so I know its a new article):

item/632-laeger-giftigt-drikkevand-er-skyld-i-deformitet-hos-zika-spaedborn

Its like they just get created out of nowhere!


Maybe some of the links is from my previuos site (As you know, many Joomla plugins sometimes makes different URLs than Joomla's own), that have been indexed by Google earlier.
I did make a lot of changes (Nearly everyone of the old URL's has been changed)

Should I leave them be, or just redirect all of them to my frontpage?
Im really lost here, really dont know what to do.


Sincerely,
Martin

I get your point about 404, and that it is ok to have some (and NOT directing them all to the same page, crazy me :D ).

It probably is a K2 URL, the site is build upon it.

I havent updated K2 to version 2.71 yet (Think I have 2.7) but will do right away. I did purchase that ekstra sh404sef-plugin for K2 (I think back in may, just after an update)

I will enable "404 recording" right away.
And "Record source", I guess it will tell me, from where the link came?

Should I delete/purge all the 404 from the "404 Request manager", to get the data recorded?


Sincerely,
Martin

Ok, thx.

I will try enable "record 404" to see what is going on. But I´ll also purge the 404 log, just to be sure there is some data to analyse from.

I will return to this ticket, when I got some data, and hopefully I can come closer to a solution.

Sincerely,
Martin

Hi again

I collected some date to see where the links came from.



11-fodsel/449
User agent : Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MJ12bot/v1.4.5; http://www.majestic12.co.uk/bot.php?+)

I followed the link, and came to a page, that explained its a bot from a search engine project, someone is developing.

On this page, I found the following information:

"Why do you keep crawling 404 or 301 pages?

We have a long memory and what to ensure that temporary errors, website down pages or other temporary changes to sites do not cause ireperable changes to your site profile when they shouldn't. Also if there are still links to these pages they will continue to be found and followed. Google have published a statement since they are also asked this question, their reason is of course the same as ours and their answer can be found here: Google 404 policy"

So the search engines continue searching, but for how long, if they dont find the link again?

I was thinking block it, as its not a known search engine (As I read it, it is a closed project)

Would you recommend block it or point to a relevant page on my site?
A lot of the 404 is from the abovementioned bot. I'd really would like to get rid of them somehow (Block bot or point to new page), as its so confusing with all theese 404.



Another one confuses me a lot, since it is an URL to backend:

administrator/components/com_acymailing/inc/openflash/php-ofc-library/ofc_upload_image.php
User agent : Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6

Is it Firefox through Windows, or what could it be?



There is, of course, also a lot links from Google and Bing, but I guess they are links, from when I moved the site, so its an easy fix.

But the other ones are really anoying, do you have any suggestions as to block or redirect?

Sincerely,
Martin

Hi

1) I see, in fact I use their Rank Tracker my self :) The reason I really want to delete these, is, that I cant get an overview of all the importent 404. The will get lost in mass of 404 from Majestic.

2) No, I dont use AcyMailing, its not even installed on my site :) I'll block those URLS.

Thx for the help. I think im gonna block the Majestic 404's just to get an overview (If it have no influence anyway), and the user agent's 404.

Sincerely,

Martin