Not found pages - doesn't make sense....??

When I click on 'Crawl stats' on the Statistics tab and click on 'Not Found' errors - I get a long list - around 85 pages that are named similar to:

http://www.spartium.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.100.exe/?L+scstore+mzhp0586ff7e987e+1153232508

I don't even know what this is and I don't think this is anywhere in the code on my site - where does Google get this from? How can I find out where Google has got this information from?

I really do hope someone can help me - I need to get rid of these errors.

Thanks! Teeny

 

Its in your cart script somewhere. Find out where the pages are being linked from. Or just remove them from the google index using the console.

 

Hey Mad4

This is really starting to freak me out!!!
I don't have a cart.
I've just gone through every page on my site and searched in the code for part of the url i.e. "cgi-local" and the code isn't anywhere on any of my pages.
The other strange thing is that when I type in one of these 'Not Found' pages in the Google search box on Google's home page - they are not showing up as even being in the search index.
They aren't in my Sitemap.xml file either.

Please, please, please can someone come up with an explanation - arrggghhh!

Thanks, Teeny

 

Maybe somebody is trying to hack your site. If people link to a file on your site google will try and spider it, even if its not there.

If I link to www.google.com/mad4-fake-file the this would appear in googles sitemaps account as a page that the spider couldn't find.

The best thing is to either remove them using the console, keep showing your 404 error page and hope google de-indexes them or 301 redirect them somewhere useful like your homepage.

Have you got a cgi-local folder? If not then just redirect all traffic to it straight to your homepage.

 

You've been very useful - I'm going to remove them using the console.

How would I set up a 301 re-direct?
I have changed some of my page names - i.e. giftbaskets.htm to gift-baskets.htm and probably should set up something for this.

Thanks again!
Teeny

 

You would need to learn htaccess to do the redirects or put some php code in the old file (if you can run php code). On another note I would use giftbaskets rather than gift-baskets on my sites.

 

Hey Mad4

Any reason why you wouldn't use the hyphen - I did hear that the page would rank higher with a hyphen between keywords...?

One last question (i'm full of them today ) would the 85 Not Found pages in Google Sitemap be affecting my ranking on Google in some way?

Thanks, Teeny

 

If you change the url/filename of your page and don't 301 redirect it to the new page then you are hurting your rankings. If all the pages google can't find were 301 redirected to the appropriate new page or to the homepage then this would help your rankings.

Search engines can recognise words and don't need them seperating with a hyphen. I just think its not needed but there is not much difference either way I suppose.

 

How about if I change the file name and remove the old page using the console? Will that sort out the problem too? Or will it still hurt my rankings if there are old links to that old page on google - even if I have removed it using the console?

Thanks, Teeny

 

Any links to the old pages will be lost along with any trust the pages have built up if you just delete them. I prefer to just 301 all my old pages to either the homepage or an appropriate new page.

I even prefer this to having a custom 404 page.