Awstats showing strange 404 referrers

awstatshttp-status-code-404

When I look at Awstats 404 errors I see sometimes strange referrers.
For example on www.mydomain.com I might see a 404 error reported in Awstats that says:

URL (not found)        Referrers
some-file.jpg          http://www.mydomain.com/some-page.html

some-file.jpg is a file that does not exist, so it's not strange that if someone tried to reach it got back a 404 from server.

The strange part is that the referring page DOES NOT EXIST TOO, I mean http://www.domain.com/some-page.html DOES NOT EXIST, so how could it be the referrer?

Is it some client cheating the referrer?

Thanks!

Best Answer

Referrer Spam is where a spammer sends fake Referrer data to see if it ends up in the referrers section of your public web-pages showing your standard web-log analyses (e.g "Top Referrers"). If the fake referrer does become visible, the spammer know they can use this technique to place spam links into your web-site causing visitors to your site to see links to their spam sites.

Related Solutions

Get page not found (404) for correct links

Here's what I found: The browser is actually getting a 404 as well on http://widwebway.com/en/solutions

When I go to: http://widwebway.com/en/widwebway/view/solutions I get:

Request URL:http://widwebway.com/en/widwebway/view/solutions
Request Method:GET
Status Code:301 Moved Permanently

The move is directed to: http://widwebway.com/en/solutions This file /en/solutions doesn't actually exist, but with your rewrite rule you're telling the browser to display the contents of /en/widwebway/view/solutions when it sees /en/solutions

From Chrome Network Inspection:

Request URL:http://widwebway.com/en/solutions
Request Method:GET
Status Code:404 Not Found

Try using the PT flag instead. since the /en/solutions isn't a real file. This should get you away from the 404 errors Example from Apache docs

Alias /icons /usr/local/apache/icons
RewriteRule /pics/(.+)\.jpg /icons/$1.gif [PT]

Php – Apache 404 Error While PHP File Exists

If it only happens in some browsers but not in others, have you tried clearing the browser cache? ErrorDocument with an absolute URL will send a redirect, which might be cached in your browser.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Get page not found (404) for correct links

Php – Apache 404 Error While PHP File Exists

Related Topic