Need help analyzing traffic statistics...

Code 301, 302, 304, etc.

[YesMom]

Here is what I have for the month of August:

Hits by Response Code

Undefined response code 1
Code 200 - OK 364287
Code 206 - Partial Content 727
Code 301 - Moved Permanently 522
Code 302 - Found 29074
Code 304 - Not Modified 27877
Code 405 - Method Not Allowed 3
Code 406 - Not Acceptable 1

Does anything here look like I have a problem? I'm particularly wondering about the Code 304 (not modified) -- what does that mean? I don't have any "404", so that is good, right? :-)

[JAB Creations]

304 not modified means the file in question was loaded from the browser's cache instead of sucking up your bandwidth. If you download a 40mb movie it stays in your cache until you or the browser clear it out. That is why when you revisit a heavy loading page the second time it will load much faster then it did the first time.

404 = file not found and having 0 404s is ALWAYS a good thing and very commendable as far as quality goes!

301 is an apache server method of saying, if someoine requests X give them y instead and is a method used to fix 404s by advanced webmasters. Here is an example...

Redirect permanent /x.html http://www.example.com/y.html

[jdMorgan]

304-Not Modified means that the client browser checked with your server and the server responded that the requested resource had not been modified since the browser last cached a copy of it. Therefore, your server did not need to return an updated copy of the resource. This is one of the mechanisms used to conserve bandwidth and improve the user experience on the Web.

The only concerns I would have would be the 302-Found responses and the 405 and 406 responses. A quick search for "302 Google" on WebmasterWorld will turn up hundreds of posts about problems with Google and other search engines' handling of 302 response codes; 302s should be used only when a URL is moved temporarily -- and that means that there is a planned date in the not-so-distant future when the resource will return and the 302 will be removed.

I should note that some scripts such a cgi email handlers will use a 302 response after a form is submitted, in order to redirect the client to a "message accepted" page. This is OK in most cases, since you won't be allowing robots to post forms anyway, so they'll never see that 302.

Be sure that those 302 responses are what is actually needed; In most cases that don't involve POSTing forms, those should probably be 301 responses.

405-Method Not Allowed means that someone tried to use an HTTP method, e.g. GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. that is not allowed or is not supported by your server. Those are suspicious because they really should not happen when the requestor is a person using standard browser. They may be signs of attempts to scrape or harvest your site, attempts to use your server as a proxy, or just a sign that someone is using a badly-coded robot on your site.

It is also possible that you or your host has added access restrictions in httpd.conf or .htaccess based on the HTTP method, and that there is a bug or a mishandled case in that code.

406-Not Acceptable means that the server cannot return content in a format (MIME-type) that is acceptable to the client, as indicated by the client's HTTP-Accept request header. For example, this could be because a browser requested content in gzipped format, and your server does not support it. However, when a client makes such a request, it is supposed to also ask for a dirt-simple standard format as a second choice. So this log entry is also odd, and may fall into the same category as the 405 and 406 description above.

For more information about client request headers, server response codes, and the HTTP protocol in general, see RFC2616 HTTP/1.1 [w3.org] and RFC1945 HTTP/1.0 [w3.org].

Jim