scanning a site for 404's

[jake66]

a while ago i had made a post about scanning my entire site for hidden 404's, but i cannot reply to it for some reason: [webmasterworld.com...]

i tried to download the link jeremy goodrich posted, but it's a .deb file.. i'm not sure what to do with this?

le_gber, the w3c validator seems to only check 200 or so links, i would like to have a bot scan my entire site and report the errors when it's done (if there were any)

"Finally - you could check your log files and see if there is any 404 hanging around."
- i changed my site from .asp to .php a few months ago and the search engines are still serving up my .asp pages via google images, so it's a lost cause trying to read those. :)

can anybody inform me how to use a .deb file?

[Tastatura]

start here
[en.wikipedia.org ]

[milanmk]

Try Xenu [home.snafu.de].

Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets.

Milan

[le_gber]

jake 66 - use a 301 Permanent Redirect to 'transfer' people and bots from the old pages to the new ones. If you just changed .asp into .php and kept the same file name use a 301 RedirectMatch.

Hope this helps

[jake66]

milanmk, thanks for that... it's what i was looking for!

it reported 404's on my links that are titled like this:
/category/Category+Name.html - why?
when i visit them, i'm greeted with a 200/ok and some of them are ranked in google as well.

le_gber, it's been several months since the switch, but i initally did use a 301 and it caused every one of my pages to be dropped from the engines. others have said i may have produced the 301 incorrectly, but i simply followed the instructions given to me on an seo forum.

[milanmk]

There are many reasons for that and almost all of them are site specific.

You can try checking the referring page that might have sent incorrect url for those category pages, I guess.

I am not getting any further clue on this…

Milan

[jake66]

i took a deeper look into my report and realized i had hit the scrollbar (which sent me flying into another section) prior to realizing which report section i was looking at :)

those error pages are coming from categories on my sitemap that i have turned offline and i have custom coded "offline" sections to produce a 404 error

this bot is extremely useful, i had no idea i had this many 404's! long day of work ahead of me :D

[milanmk]

long day of work ahead of me

But its worth it. Anyway, Goodluck.

Milan