Where are 404 links coming from

Sunday, August 17, 2008 11:53 PMDan The Fuller Brush Man

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Where are the URLs coming from that are added to the Crawl Issues Tool under 404's. Some have not been on my site in over a year so I know they are not from my sitemap. Also checked all other pages for orphaned links. None found. The only thing I can figure is you are finding them somewhere else out on the web. It would be nice to know if that is the why the are showing up and even better if I knew where you found them.

Thanks,
Dan The Fuller Brush Man

Answers

Monday, October 20, 2008 8:24 PMBrett Yount

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Hi,

Thanks for your input. We are continuously working on new tools and greater functionality of the tools already available and your input is important.

Thanks again,

Brett

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:41 PMGEMaffair

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I am just curious. In my account you give me many 404 pages. However, you don't tell me where the links are located. Since you found the link (some how, some way) how come you won't tell me the domain or url where you found it? IT is very hard to try and guess where that broken URL might be located in order to finish it.

Seems like this might be easy for you to provide to us for an easy and fast fix!

Michael
Monday, October 20, 2008 8:24 PMBrett Yount

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Hi,

Thanks for your input. We are continuously working on new tools and greater functionality of the tools already available and your input is important.

Thanks again,

Brett

Friday, November 28, 2008 9:37 AM

Jimthecoach

Dan The Fuller Brush Man wrote:

Where are the URLs coming from that are added to the Crawl Issues Tool under 404's. Some have not been on my site in over a year so I know they are not from my sitemap. Also checked all other pages for orphaned links. None found. The only thing I can figure is you are finding them somewhere else out on the web. It would be nice to know if that is the why the are showing up and even better if I knew where you found them.

Thanks,
Dan The Fuller Brush Man

Friday, November 28, 2008 9:49 AM

Jimthecoach

Dan The Fuller Brush Man wrote:

Hey Dan, I'm not sure I understand your question.

A 404 error can be used to your advandage if you set it up yourself.

It can point a simular link as yours to your site.

Jimthecoach wwwjimthecoach.com

Thursday, February 12, 2009 11:37 AMDisgruntledGoat

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I'm seeing URLs that have not existed on my site for OVER FIVE YEARS! Such is the way of the web, there are millions, maybe billions of old outdated pages that will never be updated to fix bad links.

In most cases, knowing where the links come from will not help because you will not be able to change them (if you had a forum, would you go and edit five-year-old posts?). But you could build a custom 404 page that logs the referring site to discover which are the most "popular" missing pages. You can then redirect those URLs to somewhere useful.
Friday, May 15, 2009 4:17 PMvocus_marketing

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This is actually a major issue. Some of the these error URL's need to be updated by the webmasters hosting the dead link. Anything MSN can do to provide this information, much as Google Webmaster Tools provides would be greatly appreciated. I agree with DisgruntledGoat that you won't be able to change these old pages, however if a NEW page has an improper link and you can have it fixed, that's an instant link building project.

Please provide this informaiton SOON.

Thanks,
Scott.