Can someone explain this error stats?

[Rightz]

Hi,

Just looking at stats for a new domain and trying to understand why it says that 89% of visits are a 404 error. I'm pretty much the only person that sees my site at the moment (the index page has a coming soon page).

So can anyone explain these stats? I've never had an error when going to check my page!

Thanks

HTTP Error codes

HTTP Error codes* / Hits / Percent

404 Document Not Found / 641 / 89.1 %
301 Moved permanently (redirect) / 67 / 9.3 %
302 Moved temporarily (redirect) / 8 / 1.1 %
401 Unauthorized / 3 / 0.4 %

[larryn]

Rightz,

Numbers like that suggest log spam or hackers probing... Can you share details of those requests, they might provide insight into the source of the problem.

Larry

[Rightz]

What specific info do you need?

[stapel]

Can you go through your log files, finding the lines indicating 404 responses, and say what sorts of links they were following?

For instance, you may have been spidered by a search engine just before you totally re-designed your site, and users are looking for "page_name.html" in a search-engine index or a directory, but you have renamed your page as "page_name.php". In such a case, a redirect in your .htaccess file could solve the problem.

On the other hand, somebody may have hotlinked an image that you've since replaced, so "bad_forum.php" is looking for "image.gif" which no longer exists. In such a case, providing a "hotlink.png" and installing hotlink protection in your .htaccess file might be useful.

Naturally, you can't provide specifics, but you might be able to extract information sufficient to allow folks here to provide advice (after suitable anonymisation, as displayed above).

Thank you.

Eliz.

[Rightz]

I have been spidered - but only when there was a coming soon index page. The site is only like a month old. I don't think I'm in any search engines yet and I haven't post my link anywhere.

I checked 'Error Logs' and it showed nothing at all. Ie no errors.

Checked Failed Referrer Report and the top 3 are as follows:

6586 http://www.example.com/trial.html
2919 http://www.example.com/money.html
1207 http://www.example.com/search/search.pl

(numbers are # of requests)

The Status Code Report shows:

14413 200 OK
636 301 Document moved permanently
77 302 Document found elsewhere
18888 304 Not modified since last retrieval
19 401 Authentication required
28 403 Access forbidden
17106 404 Document not found

(numbers are # of requests)

I am practically the only person that uses this site at the moment. Could using 'Zoom' search engine creator be causing this? It basically searches your site for pages then gives you the code to put on your site.

I really don't understand any of this!

[cgrantski]

Where is your stats program getting its information from, if not the error logs? It's possible that the errors are appearing in another log, maybe just the access log, assuming you're using Apache. Check all the logs, those stats are coming from somewhere.

[Rightz]

I haven't looked at the raw access logs yet - what programme can i use to open gz file?

[cgrantski]

Winzip or any decent archiving program. Win XP might be able to open it with its file compress utility.

[Rightz]

I've unzipped the accesslog with zip reader and it shows a MS-DOS application. When I open it, it closes instantly.

Any clues?!

[stapel]

When you unzip the log archive, is the name of the unzipped file something like "mydomain.com"?

If so, then, yes, your computer will open a DOS window and then close the file. With the ".com" extension on the file, your computer thinks that this is a "command" file. When you try to open the file, the computer thinks you're wanting it to run a bunch of commands. It will open the DOS box, run whatever commands it finds (but there won't be any), and then will close the file upon "completion".

That's what the computer is supposed to do with a command file. It's just not what you intended with this file. You need a different extension on the file, so the computer will know what to do with it.

Try renaming the file as "mydomain.com.txt". This should allow you to open the logs in any text editor.

Eliz.