404 with more

Looking at my web stats I was surprised the other day when I saw how many “404 Not Found” errors were reported. At this point I have no idea how to analyse my stats to reveal exactly what queries are being attempted; Or if there are broken links – where the refering page is.

Maybe this is a normal “prodding for cracks” internet occurance performed by curiously bored people or brainless bots. In time I expect gain some wisdom on this, right now I can only assume people are looking for something on my site they are not finding.

One particularly appealing idea seems to turn the otherwise dead end URLs into search queries – serving up a list of potential pathways into the site to even the most random page requests. This is beyond my effort level at the moment but I would like to, at least, include a search field on the page.

Even this provides me with significant study – so for the moment I’m going to add a link to this entry on my 404 page and encourage visitors (at least the humans) to tell me what they were looking for by typing a few words into the comments form. I’ll naturally be surprised if (m)any bother, but hey, why not.

If I can leave you with a relevant smile perhaps this 404 error page (link removed – no longer interesting). Warning this wit may be lost on you if you are not familiar with a particular model of Peugeot.