March 22, 2008
Hello all!
I hope that you are moving along with Mark’s Build a Niche Store Empire series and are learning some valuable lessons that will help you with all of your BANS stores in the future. After all, BANS is a long-term investment of time/money/effort…from what I’ve been told! 
One thing that I’ve learned is that having errors on your BANS site pages is not a good thing…especially when Google, Yahoo and MSN come in to index your site. After watching Mark’s most recent video on LogFiles, I noticed that my sites are starting to accumulate HTTP Error’s…which are located at the bottom of your Logfiles page in Hostgator. Some sites have much less/more than others, and I’m concerned about it because Google may “slap” some of us for having these errors on our sites.
I’m sure I’m not the only one with these errors, but here’s a couple screenshots of HTTP Error Codes that are showing up on my Niche Store Empire Series sites:
This first site isn’t too bad, but still showing a few errors…
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* Codes shown here gave hits or traffic “not viewed” by visitors, so they are not included in other charts.
This next one shows SIGNIFICANTLY more error codes….why, oh why????… 
| HTTP Error codes | |||||||||||||||||||||
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* Codes shown here gave hits or traffic “not viewed” by visitors, so they are not included in other charts.
Again, WAY more HTTP Errors found here…
| HTTP Error codes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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* Codes shown here gave hits or traffic “not viewed” by visitors, so they are not included in other charts.
Not bad here, but this site is only a week or so old….
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* Codes shown here gave hits or traffic “not viewed” by visitors, so they are not included in other charts.
This last site is brand new….just indexed this morning (03/22/08) and already showing errors…
| HTTP Error codes | |||||||||||||||||||||
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* Codes shown here gave hits or traffic “not viewed” by visitors, so they are not included in other charts.
I would love to hear Mark’s, or anyone’s input…first, on whether or not these “errors” are harmful to our sites. And if they are, why are these Errors are showing up?….and better yet, how to fix them and/or avoid them.
Thanks,
Eric
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14 Responses to “HTTP Error Codes in the Log Files”
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Hi, I have seen a large number of logged 302 errors on my V3 BANS sites but NOT on my V2 BANS sites. I am wondering if it is a feature of the link cloaking that was introduced into V3?
R
Same thing I am wondering Russ…
I am sure they are part of the cloaking… which is what made me worry about the high numbers and the risks of penalization due to the cloaking redirect.
Mark
Mark,
Does this mean you don’t use the cloaking in v3?
Rochelle
I’m so glad or at least I think I am glad this will tackled. I get 404 and 206 partial content errors.(206 is CAT CHANGES ?) I also get errors/warning in G webmaster tools like short meta description. From what Ive read in the past all these can slow or even stop the spiders, But I really don’t know!!
Google itself is a good place to start to answer the good or bad part I guess. I don’t know about you guys but it’s been some time since I pocked around Google tools and blog. Here’s some places I’m going to check out.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com
http://www.google.com/webmasters
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters
I think I made a big bad on one of my sites by changing most of the urls after google crawled it. Thats a V3. Should be interesting.
Be nice to find some decisive answers
Just clarify a bit about 302 redirects… They are not a KILLER of your site.
They are however widely related to black-hat cloaking, which is the main reason for my own concern. Matt Cutts (GoogleGuy) has a few posts on them and from what I can determine, there should be no penalties…
My main concern is the association to black-hat methods… essentially, we are showing one link, then cloaking and sending the user to a completely different one, which leads them offsite.
From all I have read… there is no penalty. BUT… I’ve only read for 4 hours, still have 394,000 opinions to go! :-)
Mark,
Are you using the cloaking feature of v3 or leaving them as is?
Rochelle
Rochelle,
For what it’s worth…I don’t cloak my links. Never really saw a need too…
Eric
Many (if not most) affiliate sites (using other software) use this type of cloking. If there was a problem with I would think it would have been stopped long ago.
Any more info on this subject? Has anyone found a cure.
I now have 193 error code 404 on my site that is not a month old.
I can find the source of the error but have no idea how to fix it.
In trying to use google’s webmaster tools I am given this message
We’ve detected that your 404 (file not found) error page returns a status of 200 (Success) in the header. when trying to set up.
Suggestions?
confused Jerry
I’m also concerned. Has it yet been established that these errors are as a result of cloaking affiliate links? I use the cloaking option.
I have :-
12,776 hits against code 302
43 hits against code 301
19 hits against code 404 and
1 hit against code 206 (partial content)
The 404 errors mostly relate to the themes folder and one refers to install.php.
Should I be worried and should I be doing something about this?
Denise
Well, I guess I am the next to ask what do we do with the 302 errors and redirects we are receiving from google? Do we cloak or do we not or is there a remedy to this. Thanks and have a great Masters sunday!
@ Raypro -
Even though 302’s are common on affiliate links, I have turned off cloaking.
Too many for my liking.
Mark
@ Mark I have had them off but i guess we still get them. Does the UNCLOAKING just cut down the 302’s? Thanks
anyone know what is calling this?
/scripts/moz/icons/bg.gif
I suspect it should be: /scripts/icons/bg.gif . But I’m not sure what or if it matters. That’s where my 404s come from, for the most part.