random 404s

404s that don't occur every time

[braiiins]

My site is returning 404s on the random. Sometimes a reader will be able to see a page, sometimes they won't. For example, I got an email today from a reader saying that she loaded a post fine, made a comment fine, and then when she tried loading the same post again, she got a 404.

I am also getting strange 404s like this:
http://example.com/www.google.com/reviews/scripts/annotations_bootstrap.js

And this:
http://example.com/books.google.com/books/api.js

I am on WordPress 2.6, but have been dealing with these 404s for about 2 months now and I have no idea what is going on.

[edited by: phranque at 6:10 am (utc) on Sep. 3, 2008]
[edit reason] exemplified urls [/edit]

[mayest]

I don't know what is going on, but in my 404 log I see requests for javascript files like this (recorded from Request_URI):

/directory/subdir/google-analytics.com/ga.js

They are a about one-third of my 404's, but a very small part of overall traffic. The same few IP's are getting them several times in succession, so I don't know if they are spiders or actual users. I haven't received any complaints from real users.

If anybody knows what this means, I'd sure like to be clued in. It is certainly similar to what braiiins is reporting. I do use GA, but there is no ga.js file on my server. The code is embedded in each page.

Edit: I did see a post on WW (somewhere) yesterday, that I took to mean that this could simply be a failed request to the GA server (too busy, or whatever). I don't know if that is correct or not since the post wasn't specific about what a failed call to GA would look like.

[Demaestro]

http://example.com/www.google.com/reviews/scripts/annotations_bootstrap.js

This is usually a result of having links with no http://

If you link www.example.ca in your site like this
<a href="www.example.com/example1">Example</a>

Then if someone clicks it they will actually go to
http://example.com/www.example.com/example1

<a> tags need to have http:// if they are to go to a site of a different URL

[edited by: phranque at 6:13 am (utc) on Sep. 3, 2008]
[edit reason] exemplified urls [/edit]

[braiiins]

Why would I be getting 404s from files that I don't have on my server and have no reference to in my files? I don't link to any of these files that are returning 404s. Besides the Google ones, there's others like http://example.com/scriptaculous.js, http://example.com/sharethis.css, http://example.com/jquery-ui.min.js, etc.

Share This is a plugin I use for WordPress, but sharethis.css is not a file that is part of the plugin, nor is it referenced in the plugin.

I also still don't understand 404s coming and going for certain pages/files.

[edited by: phranque at 6:14 am (utc) on Sep. 3, 2008]
[edit reason] exemplified urls [/edit]

[Demaestro]

Why would I be getting 404s from files that I don't have on my server.

That is what a 404 is. Files you don't have on your server. The issue is that you or someone else is linking to files you don't have on your server.

[braiiins]

Ha, I guess I worded that wrong. I meant files that were never intended to be on my server and are not being linked to. Some of these files are obviously not of my site, as in the Google one, for example.

I don't think it has to do with anyone linking to these files, there is something going on more than that. Sometimes I'll get upwards of a dozen or more 404s at one time. The latest happening was yesterday, all at 2:03pm, to these files, none of which are linked to through any files on my site:

/default.css
/default+en.I.js
/books.google.com/books/api.js
/www.google.com/reviews/scripts/annotations_bootstrap.js
/scriptaculous.js
/default.I.js
/mootools-yui-compressed.js
/mootools.js
/jquery-ui.js
/jquery.js
/jquery-ui.min.js
/prototype.js
/jquery.min.js
/dojo/dojo.xd.js.uncompressed.js
/dojo/dojo.xd.js
/sharethis.css

And even if these are ALL explained by someone linking to these files for whatever reason, what about the 404s that don't occur all the time? A user loaded a post, commented on it, and when trying to reload the post she just commented on, she got a 404 as if the post had never been there...

And NONE of these errors are showing in the error log.

[braiiins]

Just got 10 more for examples.

All 404s are in this fashion /images/lightview/file

These files ARE on my server, but they are not located in /images/lightview. They are in /wp-content/plugins/lightview-js/images/lightview. This can't be a mistake within the plugin or folder structure because these 404s would occur every time anyone visits the site, as these originated from the main page.

Is it possible something in my .htaccess file is to blame? I don't see anything wrong with it, but I don't know much about those things.