404 Errors: Report, monetize and analyse
After your websites getting more pages and links, the chance that a visitor will follow a dead link to your site exists. If a visitor is trying to access a page on your site, the server will report (normally) a 404 error. The response is by default some unfriendly page with some spare information about the error which let most visitors stop visiting your site. But using the 404 error the right way, you the site owner can collect important information like:
- Of course the broken link or URL
- The HTTP_REFERER information where the dead link is available
- How often people try to access the bad URL
Using the right tools you’re able to turn 404 errors into a powerful resource:
- Provide a site search feature and let people search what they are looking
- Add advertisements to your error page and start earning money
- Learn about what people like to see on your site
In this blog we will show how-to:
- Create a dynamic error page using the Google Site search and Adsense content ads
- Setup Google analytics to track 404 errors using a filter
- Set the site search feature with Google Analytics to collect the search queries from your visitor
Error reporting page
With the Apache webserver it’s possible to use custom directives for your error script, place this code into your .htaccess file (place the file into the site root):
We use for the custom error script the most common HTTP errors.
Next we need to create a PHP script called error.php which can handle the different errors:
ErrorDocument 400 /error.php?err=400
ErrorDocument 401 /error.php?err=401
ErrorDocument 403 /error.php?err=403
ErrorDocument 404 /error.php?err=404
ErrorDocument 500 /error.php?err=500We use for the custom error script the most common HTTP errors.
Next we need to create a PHP script called error.php which can handle the different errors:
<?php $errorNum = (int)$_GET['err']; $err_str = array(404=>'Not Found', 400=>'Bad Request', 401=>'Unauthorized', 403=>'Forbidden', 500=>'Internal Server Error'); echo ' <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>'.$err_str[$errorNum].'</title> </head> <body> <h1>An error occured: '.$err_str[$errorNum].'</h1> <!-- place here your advertisement --> <!-- place here your Google analytics code --> </body> </html>'; ?>
This script will show the different errors and also some advertisement if you add the ad code. Don’t forget to add the GA code snippet.Track dead links in Google Analytics
In case of a 404 error the page title on this custom error page will be “Not Found”. We use the page title as a filter in Google Analytics to track the page views. Create a new profile for the site you’re working on and add this filter:Adding Google Site Search to your 404 error page
If you haven’t done yet, create a Google site search for your website. Add only your own website to the list of searched sites and don’t search the entire web. Add your Google Adsense ID (section “Make Money”) and head to the section “Look and feel” and select the option Iframe. Choose a style for the search form / result and maybe you like to customize the style. Push now the button “Get code” (or enter the section “Get code” from the sidebar) and enter there the URL from your error page. Copy / paste the code for the search form and the results into the body section from your error page. Your completed page will look like:<?php $errorNum = (int)$_GET['err']; $err_str = array(404=>'Not Found', 400=>'Bad Request', 401=>'Unauthorized', 403=>'Forbidden', 500=>'Internal Server Error'); echo ' <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <title>'.$err_str[$errorNum].'</title> </head> <body> <h1>An error occured: '.$err_str[$errorNum].'</h1> <form action="http://www.yourdomain.com/error.php" id="cse-search-box"> <div> <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="thisCodeIsProvidedByGoogleCSE" /> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:10" /> <input type="hidden" name="ie" value="UTF-8" /> <input type="text" name="q" size="31" /> <input type="submit" name="sa" value="Zoeken" /> </div> </form> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/cse/brand?form=cse-search-box&lang=en"></script> <div id="cse-search-results"></div> <script type="text/javascript"> var googleSearchIframeName = "cse-search-results"; var googleSearchFormName = "cse-search-box"; var googleSearchFrameWidth = 600; var googleSearchDomain = "www.google.com"; var googleSearchPath = "/cse"; </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/afsonline/show_afs_search.js"></script>'; if (empty($_GET['q'])) { // show the ad only if there is no search echo ' <!-- place here your advertisement -->'; } echo ' <!-- place here your Google analytics code --> </body> </html>'; ?>Enable site search tracking in Google Analytics
The code for the error page is complete and we move to the last step: Tracking the site search queries from the error page. To do this we need to go in Google Analytics to the profile we created for the error page and click Edit (twice), check the setting Do Track Site Search, enter a “q” as the “Query Parameter” and click Safe Changes.
