Since Aug 18th of this year I have been getting 404 errors every day on this exact URL http://www.rentvine.com/default.cfm. So far today I have had over one hundred 404 errors for this page. For example here are some errors from today which come from different spiders and normal desktop user agents: #Fields: date time c-ip cs-username s-ip cs-method cs-uri-stem cs-uri-query sc-status sc-bytes cs-bytes time-taken cs-version cs-host cs(User-Agent) cs(Cookie) cs(Referer) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2006-11-05 15:11:02 207.46.98.85 - 209.200.115.149 GET /default.cfm - 404 424 257 203 HTTP/1.0 www.rentvine.com msnbot/1.0+(+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) - - 2006-11-05 14:07:56 66.249.72.180 - 209.200.115.149 GET /default.cfm - 404 15831 257 390 HTTP/1.1 www.rentvine.com Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Googlebot/2.1;++http://www.google.com/bot.html) - - 2006-11-05 14:07:32 74.6.71.55 - 209.200.115.149 GET /default.cfm - 404 16419 218 515 HTTP/1.0 www.rentvine.com Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Yahoo!+Slurp;+http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp) - - 2006-11-05 11:54:24 66.154.102.78 - 209.200.115.149 GET /default.cfm - 404 424 316 218 HTTP/1.0 www.rentvine.com Gigabot/2.0+(http://www.gigablast.com/spider.html) - - 2006-11-05 01:59:26 67.49.196.104 - 209.200.115.149 GET /default.cfm - 404 14937 566 625 HTTP/1.1 www.rentvine.com Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+SV1;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322) - http://www.rentvine.com/default.cfm?cs=102&action=results&pt=1 Every time the spiders hit that exact URL they get a 404. So this is a repeatable error. Note that I do not receive 404 errors in my log files for http://www.rentvine.com/ I only get them for http://www.rentvine.com/default.cfm. When I use sites like http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html to check my page for a 404 message, the http://www.rentvine.com/default.cfm page shows a status of 200 and not a 404. Since this is an error I can repeat, I downloaded the User Agent Switcher add-on for Firefox (http://chrispederick.com/work/useragentswitcher/) and selected Googlebot and other spiders. If you are not familiar with this tool, what it does is change your user agent when surfing the web so you can spoof yourself like a spider. Here are the results for that: 2006-11-05 21:34:00 71.196.198.180 - 209.200.115.149 GET /default.cfm - 200 27244 664 250 HTTP/1.1 www.rentvine.com Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Googlebot/2.1;++http://www.google.com/bot.html) - - 2006-11-05 21:33:55 71.196.198.180 - 209.200.115.149 GET /default.cfm - 200 27244 675 359 HTTP/1.1 www.rentvine.com Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Yahoo!+Slurp;+http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp) - - 2006-11-05 21:33:47 71.196.198.180 - 209.200.115.149 GET /default.cfm - 200 27244 608 296 HTTP/1.1 www.rentvine.com Mozilla/2.0+(compatible;+Ask+Jeeves/Teoma) - - As you can see from these log entries, everything looks fine. But when I came from my results page (referrer) I did get the error: 2006-11-05 21:02:19 71.196.198.183 - 209.200.115.149 GET /default.cfm - 404 15046 766 390 HTTP/1.1 www.rentvine.com Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Googlebot/2.1;++http://www.google.com/bot.html) - http://www.rentvine.com/default.cfm?cs=135&action=results I am confused why this is happening, and suggestions you can provide would be appreciated! I also asked my host twice and they couldn't help me - they told me to contact Google. I am not sure if this issue is hurting me in the search engine ranking or not. To be on the safe side I want to fix this.
Not sure if this will help or not. I visted your site. Your script is not set up for SE friendly URLs. When I clicked on a state I got http://www.rentvine.com/default.cfm?cs=18 MSN can handle such a string but most spiders and bots will drop the ? and all that comes after it. So yes, IMO it is killing you in the SE game. Edit: Consider a 301 redirect from rentvine.com/default.cfm to rentvine.com/ as a temporary solution while you work out the details.
Colbyt, Thanks for the idea of redirecting the rentvine.com/default.cfm page to rentvine.com/ as a temporary solution. I am still baffled however. Dave