AdSense & 404 errors

[SugarKane2]

Recently I have been getting hundreds and hundreds of 404 errors on my site.

They have the format:

domain/directory/directory/FFCC33 or
domain/directory/directory/008800

where the numbers and letters at the end of the request are what are
generating the 404's. It happens not continually but every few days for an hour or so.

Those numbers and letters are hex values which happen to be part of the AdSense code, specifically this piece of code that controls the font colour of the url that is in the ad:

google_color_url = "FFCC33";

The Adsense code has been on my site for months without these errors before and I have not modified or changed it in anyway.

I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this and knows what is causing these errors?

[jenkers]

hi - I seem to remember 404 errors being caused by older browsers that couldn't handle relative urls in G's javascript.

That said - I don't rmember anything about the hex values for colours being involved.

Are the errors consistently being delivered by the same user agent?

[SugarKane2]

Yes, always the same user agent:

Mozilla/4.5 (compatible; HTTrack 3.0x; Windows 98).

I hadn't checked that until you mentioned it.

Apparently it is an offline browser that downloads entire sites.

This, in way, does not surprise me as users of sites like Wikipedia have been raping and pillaging my site content for the last few months now.

[jenkers]

there's your answer then. If you don't want them downloading the site then I guess you can block the UA - so long that you don't knock off your regular browsers in the process.

[frox]

I guess you can block the UA

You certainly can but all these programs have the option to present a different UA, that is, to pretend to be a "normal" browser.

blocking these UAs will anyway block the less experienced users ...