Avoid 404 error with this string /&

[silverbytes]

I see in error logs many errors like this

/mydirectorithatexist/&

I searched my site for /mydirectorithatexist/& and nothing appears...
What is it and how do I get ride of those? I thought some of my links perhaps would be wrong and have a character at the end but I couldnt find that.

[larryn]

Silverbytes,

There's not much you can easily do to avoid user errors when request URL's. This looks like it might be that of an ill-programmed bot or someone testing your server. I'd just ignore them.

Larry

[Dijkgraaf]

It could be some site has an indirect link to your site in the form of
www.listcompany.tld/redirectscript?url=http://www.example.com/mydirectorithatexist/&category=s
(where example.com is your domain)
Then a bot has come along and picked up the URL from that and included the &category=s

I've seen that sort of indirect linking by sites that want to count clicks on outbound links.

A better practice for them would be to have the URL as the last parameter giving less scope for bots looking for links less chance to get confused.
e.g.
www.listcompany.tld/redirectscript?category=s&url=http://www.example.com/mydirectorithatexist/

The way to get rid of them is to do a search and find out who is linking to you that way, and get them to change (an uphill battle). Alternatively put a smart redirect in place that recognises those URL's and strips the & to serve up the correct URL.