404's vs regular traffic

**trevorhoare** · 08-18-2008, 04:26 PM

I've read some posts about this; and I think I have the right answer, but I want to veritfy.

If someone goes to myparkeddomain.com/random/sub/dir it is counted as a 404 instead of a visitor.
That visitor still gets the same parked page as if they went directly to my url.
If that user clicks a link, I still get credit.
That visitor only shows up in my panel under 404s.

Is that all correct?
Basically I'm getting that there is no difference between a 404 and a direct visitor, right?

Thanks,
Trev

**Donny Simonton** · 08-18-2008, 06:33 PM

Trev,
One little difference. If a person goes to a 404, then does something, search, click, etc... Then you have 1 visitor and 1 404.

I talked to a friend at one of the big web analytics companies and he said that's how everybody counted them.

Donny

**actnow** · 08-23-2008, 09:21 AM

My 404s number is running approx. 1/3 of my visitor number.

What percentages are others seeing?

Is it better for the percentage to be higher or lower?

**David G** · 08-23-2008, 09:52 AM

1/3 is high.

It's best if you have low or no 404's but if sending www to non-www, or the reverse, you can get a lot of 404's even more than 1/3 at times. However, that kind of a 404 is OK because it is by-design rather than error.

**actnow** · 08-23-2008, 06:20 PM

Originally Posted by trader

1/3 is high.

It's best if you have low or no 404's but if sending www to non-www, or the reverse, you can get a lot of 404's even more than 1/3 at times. However, that kind of a 404 is OK because it is by-design rather than error.

Since, I just set the domain at the registrar to Parked's dns (ns1.parked.com) ,
I have no idea what is happening.

I wonder if this is further effecting my poor ppc revenue.

Since, Donny posted in a different thread, I'm surprised he didn't respond to this question while he was logged into DNF. ???

**Donny Simonton** · 08-23-2008, 06:25 PM

Sorry, I was actually online earlier on my blackberry and it's not very easy to respond sometimes.

404s are 404s. Not really anything to worrry about to be honest with you. We have had so many people who are confused about it, we have actually considered removing it all together.

Just PM me your user name and I'll see if I can track down where the traffic is coming and or going.

Donny

**randomo** · 08-23-2008, 06:28 PM

So far this month, I have a lot more 404's than visitors. Donny, want to trace that for me please? Thanks.

**Donny Simonton** · 08-23-2008, 06:35 PM

randomo - Sorry, I have no idea what your username is.

Donny

**randomo** · 08-23-2008, 06:42 PM

Originally Posted by donsimon

randomo - Sorry, I have no idea what your username is.

Donny

Just PM'd it to you, thanks.

**Donny Simonton** · 08-23-2008, 07:00 PM

One thing to remember about 404's is that if you have a domain that has somebody was linking to an image before, now it will show up as a 404. So to use a bad example, let's say you had an adult site and people were hotlinking you and then you park the domain, you would probably have a lot of 404s.

Donny

**NameGuy** · 08-23-2008, 07:25 PM

I think you should also show 404's per domain.

**Donny Simonton** · 08-23-2008, 07:33 PM

If we don't remove the 404s, then we plan on it. It should have been available about 2 weeks ago, but we ran into some situations. So now we are going to be making additional information available hopefully soon as we have to change all kinds of different things.

Today we really only allow you to see stats by day, we will be adding pay period, month and year hopefully this week. And potentially most if not all of the stats displaying will be much faster.

Donny

**Acro** · 08-23-2008, 07:48 PM

It's easy: if you have a domain with a lot of 404's, just set up your own DNS, trap all the 404 traffic via .htaccess and redirect it to the main page which forwards to the domain lander. This way, all traffic is accounted for, your visits are transparent and you can keep track of 404's in your own stats.

**NameGuy** · 08-23-2008, 08:12 PM

Great, Donny. Thanks!

**David G** · 08-24-2008, 07:23 PM

Originally Posted by Acro

It's easy: if you have a domain with a lot of 404's, just set up your own DNS, trap all the 404 traffic via .htaccess and redirect it to the main page which forwards to the domain lander. This way, all traffic is accounted for, your visits are transparent and you can keep track of 404's in your own stats.

The ability to do that as a result of parked.com allowing framed forwarding (instead of only dns changes) is one of the best advantages for me in using parked.com

parked.com and trafficz.com are both good and both use a Yahoo feed and both permit you to use custom content and outside links, all very valuable but trafficz does not offer forwarding and only dns change, but both do custom content (which everyone should in fact offer).

**Acro** · 08-24-2008, 07:29 PM

You don't need framing, it's a host redirect. sedo and Namedrive allow it too. Not sure about TrafficZ as I never used them.

**David G** · 08-24-2008, 09:34 PM

Originally Posted by Acro

You don't need framing, it's a host redirect. sedo and Namedrive allow it too. Not sure about TrafficZ as I never used them.

But framing has advantages over redirect.

**Acro** · 08-24-2008, 09:47 PM

If you want to frame something along with the main content, it does

Otherwise, it's not needed in order to keep track of visits or redirect all traffic to the destination of your choice.

**David G** · 08-25-2008, 02:14 AM

I was not referring to that type (which I do not use or like, and I believe is not liked by the SE's) but this kind of simple framed forwarding (taken form the parked.com site setup help page):

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>DomainName</TITLE></HEAD>
<FRAMESET><FRAME name="main" src="http://www.searchnut.com/?domain=YOURDOMAIN" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="auto" frameborder="0"></FRAMESET></HTML>