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Support - 404 Email

First: If you don't see the same URLs showing up, day after day in your email report, you may safely ignore the email.

 Second: If you can't find any reference to your site when you browse to the referrer page in the email report, you may safely ignore the email. (This means that the problem has either been corrected, or didn't exist in the first place.)

The Details

1. Every time a html page, image, or in fact ANY file is accessed by a web browser, an entry is written to a log file.
2. If the requested file does not exist, a 404 warning is generated to the user's browser, and an entry is also made to the log file.
3. This makes it appear to the user that part or all of your site is either gone or not functioning.
4. This can be especially important if the "bad" link is on a search engine site. If people are searching for something your site can provide, but are directed to a link that doesn't exist, they will simply go to the next link the search site offers, and will probably never try your site again.
5. A way is needed to let the webmaster of the site know when these 404 warnings are being generated, and from where, so that they can be corrected, if possible.
6. Adhost's exclusive "Bad Links or Missing Pages" email uses those 404 log entries to create a report that tries to pin point which sites might have bad links pointed to your site. This is a totally automated process that simply looks at the 404 warnings in the web log files, and if they have a referrer page listed, puts that in the email and sends it to you. Only one reference is listed for each unique referrer page, although there may have been many 404 warnings generated for that page.
7. This email is based on yesterday's log files, so if you fixed the problem at noon today, you will probably still see an email tomorrow for the 404 warnings generated before the time that you fixed them.
8. Note that sometimes there is no referrer page. This can happen if the user types in a URL instead of clicking on one. Mistyping might result in a 404 warning, but since nothing can be done about it after the fact, that warning is ignored by the automated 404 email process.
9. Note, also, that some browsers pass on "bogus" referrer pages when faced with a 404 error. If you don't find a link to your site on a referrer page, either it has been removed, or it wasn't ever there. In either case you can ignore the email warning.
10. Finally, there is the case where both the referrer and the "bad" page both point to your site. This almost always means you have a bad link on one of your pages that needs to be corrected. Remember that the link could be ANY missing file, for example, a missing background image would generate a 404 warning.
11. If the referrer is NOT on your site, and DOES have a bad link to your site, the ONLY way to get it corrected it to contact the webmaster/owner of the referrer page and ask him or her to either remove or correct the link.

Terminology

URL
A URL is simply a specification to get to a web site. For example, "http://adhost.com/" is a URL. http://adhost.com/ is a link to that web site, and if you click on it, it becomes the referrer in the adhost.com web logs.

404 Warnings
"404" is simply the numeric code used by the web server to describe the situation where the web server is unable to find a requested file.

Referrer Page
A "referrer page" is the page that the link to your site is on. For example, if the main page at "adhost.com" has a link to your site, then "http://adhost.com/" would be the referrer page. If that link was no good, it would generate a 404 warning, and the email would list "http://adhost.com/" as the "referrer".