404's greatly exceed number of visits - huh?

[draggar]

This doesn't make a lot of sense - I'm seeing dozens and dozens of 404s every day with my domains at Parked but only a handful of visits?

Doesn't (or shouldn't) Parked do a global redirect to the parked page?

[ksinclair]

try it yourself to see what they do

some parking will monetize the 404 for themselves, not good

[draggar]

It pulls up a parked page but I can't tell if it is my own or not.

[RustyK]

same here. 404 running wild.

[Acro]

404's count as such, they don't count as visits in order to separate the two. If a click occurs while on a 404 "page" - essentially the same template - then it counts both as a 404 and a click. That's what Donny said in the past.

[draggar]

So then the question is:

Can I include the 404's if someone asks about traffic?

Say 2 visitors and 24 404's - would that be 26 visitors?

[Acro]

Well, the best way to deduce traffic would be to use your own DNS.

[draggar]

... and what?

Forward the domain to the parking company?

[Acro]

No, capture and track where the 404's come from and then forward the traffic.

[Donny Simonton]

Draggar - This is how we look at everything. If a surfer comes to the landing page of a domain or the results page of the domain, we consider them to be 1 visitor. If they reload that page 1,000 times they are still one visitor. Which is what we show today. If they go to another domain, and go to the landing page they are a unique visitor there as well. So now you have 1 unique visitor on two different domains.

Then the same surfer goes to a 404 on the third domain, we count them as a 404, not a visitor. But if the surfer does anything, search or click, they are converted to a visitor, but they also stay as a 404 as well.

Donny

[draggar]

So my traffic is a bit higher than I've been giving credit for.

TY all for the explinations.

[David G]

You should use htaccess to forward your error code traffic (not just 404s but others too) to a 404.htm page and from there the visitor can go to your index page or whatever. I believe that is the correct way to do it. If done that way imo a 404 visitor is roughly as valuable as any other visitor and should count in your stats.

[draggar]

With my sites I have a special 404 page but this is parked pages w/ Parked - I don't think I can create a custom 404 page.

[David G]

With my sites I have a special 404 page but this is parked pages w/ Parked - I don't think I can create a custom 404 page.

It can be done if using frame forwarding instead of using the ppc providers nameservers.

[denny007]

404 is not type-in but most likely someone who clicked a link imho. So is good to know if the traffic is type-in or expired...