Tracking requests for which 404s were returned

Using WebTrends Live

[Robert Charlton]

We have a site that's been extensively rebuilt, and on which... for a variety of reasons... not all old pages have been 301 redirected. We're using WebTrends Live; we'd like to track the requests for which 404s are returned, to see if there are any 301s we should be adding.

I'm thinking that a possible way to do this would be to build a custom 404 page and put WebTrends Live tracking script on it... but I don't know if this would work, and if it would report which page was originally requested.

[pageoneresults]

Robert Charlton, I've not had to worry about this yet because we are still running our server based WebTrends in addition to using the WTL tracking.

I've been through all the help files and cannot locate any information about tracking 404's. Maybe a support request to WTL will provide information on this subject, I'd like to find out too. As a matter of fact, I'm sending in a request right after this reply.

P.S. I replied to your sticky.

[pageoneresults]

Robert Charlton, here is the response I received from WTL support in regards to tracking 404s. Your original approach above is the recommended method.

If you want to get away from looking at your physical log files for the 404 errors, your only option to track them would be to use a customized 404 page. Essentially, the problem is the page view is sent to us via a cookie when the page executes the JavaScript. Well, if there is not a page to execute the script, you won't get a cookie sent to WebTrendsLive. So, you can either look at the web server's log files or use a custom 404 page.

Many web servers can be configured to serve up a static html page when a 404 or other type error code is presented. These pages usually consist of a company logo and any other important information (webmaster email address, etc). You can put the tracking code on this page and it will submit a view to us on a 404 error.

[Robert Charlton]

pageone... Thanks. Contacting them was on my list of things to do.

[tbear]

I normally build a custom 404 page and add that it would help future visitors if they would find the time to send a quick e-mail stating the link they hit (adding the mailto:etc, link, with subject and body prepared to save them time), so that it can be corrected. Thanks to visitors I have found several over the years. (not so many that I need worry about being careless though, LOL)

[nonprof webguy]

If you're building a custom 404 page, then it's fairly simple to put a script in that will record the page the user was seeking.

FYI, it's the cs-uri-query field of the typical log.

I run a server-side script that writes some of the info about what the visitor was looking for to a table in my database, but you could just as easily have it write to a text file that you could look at from time to time. It's also helpful to see what kind of hacker attacks you're getting.