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Hard and Soft 404 Not found URLs in Website Download
A1 Website Download has en option to crawl error pages for links since our software has built-in protections against crawling endless error pages.
Why Crawling "404 - Not Found" Page URLs Is Problematic
Generally speaking, crawling URLs that error with e.g. 404 - Not Found is a bad idea. To understand the reason, take a look at the following example of the process in a naive website crawler handling relative broken links:
This is why most crawlers by default do not continue crawling pages that return 404 - Not Found.
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- Crawler detects url http://www.example.com/directory/ gives 404 - not found.
- Crawler finds http://www.example.com/directory/ links to directory/something.
- Crawler concatenates http://www.example.com/directory/ and directory/something into http://www.example.com/directory/directory/something.
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- Crawler detects url http://www.example.com/directory/directory/ gives 404 - not found.
- Crawler finds http://www.example.com/directory/directory/ links to directory/something.
- Crawler concatenates http://www.example.com/directory/directory/ and directory/something into http://www.example.com/directory/directory/directory/something.
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- Classic spider trap where the website crawl will continue forever.
This is why most crawlers by default do not continue crawling pages that return 404 - Not Found.
A1 Website Download Can Crawl 404 Pages
Some websites include important links in pages returned for e.g. 404 - not found errors. You can force
A1 Website Download to scan error pages for links
by checking option: scan website | crawler options | crawl error pages.
Please note that links relative to current path will be ignored when analysing error pages to avoid getting caught in an endless crawling loop.
If necessary to have error page URLs scanned for links, use one of the following kinds of links instead:
Please note that links relative to current path will be ignored when analysing error pages to avoid getting caught in an endless crawling loop.
If necessary to have error page URLs scanned for links, use one of the following kinds of links instead:
- /directory/something
- http://www.example.com/directory/something
Soft 404 Errors and How to Avoid Them
If your website correctly returns HTTP response 404 - Not Found for a non-existing URL, it is called a hard 404 error.
Conversely, a soft 404 error is when your website instead incorrectly responds with e.g. HTTP response 200 - Found.
The reason soft errors are problematic for crawlers are that they create spider traps similar to what described earlier above.
Note: Even if your page visibly states "not found" in page content text for URLs and pages that do not exist, you need to make sure your website actually returns HTTP response code 404 - Not Found and not e.g. 200 - Found.
The reason soft errors are problematic for crawlers are that they create spider traps similar to what described earlier above.
Note: Even if your page visibly states "not found" in page content text for URLs and pages that do not exist, you need to make sure your website actually returns HTTP response code 404 - Not Found and not e.g. 200 - Found.
