Things change fast on the web. Pages move, sites appear and disappear, URLs
change. It's impossible to keep everything indexed and up to date. The universe
of 404s keeps expanding. But a good portion of the content you're looking for is
not gone, it's simply moved. If you know where to look, you have a good chance
of finding it. Here's how.
Step One: Reload or refresh the page. Sometimes a 404 is just a
fluke.
Step Two: Look for obvious spelling errors in the URL. Fix them.
Try switching the file extension (i.e. change .htm to .html or vice versa).
Step Three: Back up one level in the URL, and continue backing up
until you find something.
http://www.website.com/user/familypix/gramma.jpg
Erase everything after the last slash in the address, so you're left with:
http://www.website.com/user/familypix/
You may get a page or a directory listing; in either case, you should be able
to find what you're looking for or verify that it's gone. If you don't come up
with anything at this address, try backing up again:
http://www.website.com/user/
Step Four: Go to the site's main page and try to search from there.
For most addresses, you would just use the first part of the address:
http://www.website.com/
Many online services, free hosting sites, and ISP's use a format similar to
this:
http://members.aol.com/~username/
In addition, Google and
other search engines have a feature in which you can restrict your search to one
website. If you can't find a sub-page that you believe exists, go to Google,
type in search words followed by a space and site:website.com. Or go to
their "advanced" search page.
Step Five: Try to find an archived version of the page. Google offers an excellent
'cached' facility. If you're searching for a page and it comes up a 404, try
clicking the 'cached' link instead. Not only will Google often have a saved copy
of the page, they will also highlight your search terms.
The Wayback Machine
offers a similar service, in that you can enter a URL and view a page or site
'as it once was'.
Step Six: Write to the webmaster. If nothing else, you'll be doing
them a favor by making them aware of the broken link:
webmaster@website.com
Step Seven: Write to the webmaster of the referring page, or use
their form for reporting broken links. Again, this might not help you find the
page you're looking for, but at least you may be saving other people the
trouble. Most search engines and directories have an easy way to report broken
links.
|