Weird 404s

Slurp mainly, and browsers.

[DavidT]

I've been getting a lot of 404 errors for urls that have never existed. There are two types.

First is always from Slurp. It requests pages with odd words/codes in the urls, words that do not appear anywhere on my site. Like 'with-named-readtable', and 'bt2115cl', and 'reiki'.

Second kind are from browsers I think and look like this: 'site.com/keyword/<b>keyword</b>-keyword/. Enclosing words in file names with the bold tag but I don't use the bold tag anywhere on the site.

All this only happens in a sub-domain of the site.

[encyclo]

with-named-readtable

If you search the above in Google, it one looks like something to do with the Lisp-based Allegro development language/system. Can't at the face of it explain what it is doing in an URL request.

site.com/keyword/<b>keyword</b>-keyword/

Looks like a broken link, probably due to an error in a page generated by a CMS which was set to highlight certain terms but failed to exclude words contained in URLs. Try searching for the exact string in Google and you might identify the originating site.

[Stefan]

The slurp ones are common. Sometimes the bot seems to have a bit of a nervous breakdown and starts requesting pages that never existed on the site. You get some weird ones, alright.

[Durham_e]

Thanks for that Stefan.

Last few days have been hit hard with Slurp 404's.

Wondered about some of the file names/directories being requested so searched on them. Nothing enlightening.
Maybe bots have now developed imaginations.

[bull]

Here, slurp creates filenames from a mix of existent ones with totally unrelated ones, obviously from other sites. It seems to occur every two months or so, very annoying.