Redirecting bad spellers

should I show them the way?

[httpwebwitch]

I see a lot of 404 errors in the log where someone misspelled the URL, and they refresh and refresh over and over... they're simple typos like

h**p://www.mydomain.com/nutriton/disease.htm
which should be
h**p://www.mydomain.com/nutrition/disease.htm

I could certainly write some .htaccess redirects to catch people making silly errors like this and send them to the proper page. But really - SHOULD I? I mean, if I set that precedent, I'm really opening pandora's box of trying to catch all misspelled links.

What do you people think?
Do *you* ever do this kind of thing?

[asquithea]

Are you sure it isn't your misspelling? Obviously you know your own content, but it just seems a little unlikely to me that your users would be entering a long URL to get straight to that page. Maybe you've got a dead link somewhere.

In general terms, I don't see a problem with automatic redirection for common mistakes. But if I were you, I'd make sure every redirection was logged, otherwise you risk masking real problems in your site.

[encyclo]

It sounds as if you need the appropriately-named Apache module mod_speling [httpd.apache.org]. I would definitely try to catch the misspellings, especially if you have a lot of type-ins.

You could also do a custom 404 message with some scripting to offer a Google-like "Did you mean..." You're users willl defenately apreciate it!

Of course, I never make spelling mistakes myself ;)

[httpwebwitch]

thanks asquithea, my link checker (a necessity on a 3000+ page content site) distinguishes real links from redirected ones, so I can tell whether my links are OK. But that's a good point. These are, as encyclo calls them, "type-ins". Either that or they're backlinks from someone else's site, and I can't account for their "speling".

<anecdote>
One morning I came in to find over 1200 404 errors logged and accumulating because a popular entertainment site (i won't name names, but it was the official site of an african-american daytime talk show celebrity best known for "feel good" programming, losing weight, and discovering Doctor Phil) misspelled a URL in a link to our site - by the time I quickly patched a redirect for them, hundreds of visitors saw our 404 page... which thankfully has a "did you mean..." feature!
</anecdote>

I'll check out that speling mod and see if that behaves sensibly enough to be used in this case.

[edited by: httpwebwitch at 8:38 pm (utc) on May 4, 2004]

[Tropical Island]

We use a custom 404 with the major pages indexed on it so people can easily find what they are looking for.

We also put a note on it like "you reached this page through an incorrect link, blah, blah......"

Really helps.