How to find the source of my 404s

'404 - Page Not found'

This is a common error that we have all come across. We see this on our browser screen when the page we are trying to visit does not exist on the server.

for the technically inclined, it is the status code returned by the HTTP server when the page requested does not exist on the server.

On the web analytics group, Sue had a question: She is tracking this website and sees that large number of 404s come from the most visited page on her website.

Here is my proposed solution in Omniture Discover
Follow the below logic. It should be same in any WA tool

Let us call the "most popular page that is redirecting to the 404s" as X
and the 404 page as Y

1. Create a segment for all the folks who visited X and Y
2. For this segment look at the traffic source split

E.g: In Discover
* create a segment by dragging the visit container to RHS
* Click on edit
* add the 2 pages X and Y
* save

Then go to the traffic source report and pull the segment as a column and choose the date range.

You should be good!!

Thanks
Kiran



>
> --- On Wed, 4/29/09, Sue wrote:
>
> From: Sue
> Subject: [webanalytics] probably a very dumb ? but I need help finding source of 404
> To: webanalytics@ yahoogroups. com
> Date: Wednesday, April 29, 2009, 9:00 AM
>
> Community, please help me...
> I use Google Analytics and Webtrends version 8.0. WebTrends looks at my log files.
>
> I have read this article: http://googlewebmas tercentral. blogspot. com/2008/ 10/webmaster- tools-shows- crawl-error. html but it is no help to me. Google analytics shows no errors.
>
> but my page that 404's are redirected to is my number one visited page on my site. Where are these people coming from? Can I get this info from WebTrends?
>
> I have been so frustrated, I have actually clicked every link I can find on my web site to try to find the culprit.
>
> HELP!
> Thanks!
> Sue
>

Site Tagging based Web Analytics tools

Another category of WA tools rely on site tagging.

(1) they create an account for you on their server
e.g: Google Analytics, Yahoo Analytics

(2) You decide on the pages you want tracking metrics. Typically you will do so for your entire website.
Then tracking code is added to the pages that you want tracked.
E.g: The ever so familiar javascript tags that are added when Omniture is implemented
Remember .js :)
The WA tool may make use of cookies on your machine that already existed or create new ones

(3) Each time a visit/click happens on your website the .js code gets executed, contacts the WA server and sends this information.
So over a period of time, the server builds a repository of information that mirrors the server log file. The server may dynamically insert it in a minable format into the data mart residing at the WA server

(4) the WA tool lets you login on their server with the account you created first and view a set of reports for your website.
Each time you ask for a report, they are querying their data mart