Pages not found

Overview

When a visitor follows a link to a page that has moved or been deleted, they see a "Page not found" error. The Pages not found report under SEO → Reports lists those addresses, so you can fix the link that sends people there or add a redirect to the page that replaced it.

Reading the report

1. In the WordPress admin, go to SEO → Reports and open Pages not found. The number beside it is how many addresses were hit in the last 30 days.
2. Each row shows the Address visitors asked for, how many Hits it had, when it was Last seen, and From: the page the visitor came from, when their browser said. An address on your own site means one of your pages links to it.
3. View opens the address so you can see the error yourself. Add redirect appears when the Redirection plugin is active (see below).

The report lists its 50 busiest addresses; select Show all at the bottom for the rest, up to 500.

Fixing an address

WordPress redirects an address that's missing only its folder (for example /our-team/ when the page is at /about/our-team/) to the page with exactly that name, and an old address to a page whose address you changed. Dirigible SEO doesn't let it guess beyond that: an address such as /events/ no longer sends visitors to an unrelated page whose address merely starts with "events", so it's listed here as not found and you can choose where it should go.

• If the page still exists under a new address, add a redirect from the old address to the new one. A redirect sends visitors (and search engines) straight to the right page.
• If the link is on your own site (the From column shows your site), edit that page and fix the link.
• If the page is gone for good and nothing replaces it, a "not found" error is the right answer. Leave it.

Redirects with the Redirection plugin

Dirigible SEO doesn't add redirects itself. The free Redirection plugin does, and most Dirigible sites have it:

• When Redirection is active and its 404 Logs are on (its default), this report reads Redirection's log instead of keeping its own, so both show the same hits. Redirection keeps its log for 7 days unless you change that under Tools → Redirection → Options, so the report covers 7 days then.
• Add redirect opens Redirection's 404 log filtered to that address. Select Add Redirect on any row there; the source address is filled in, so you only type where it should go.
• If Redirection's 404 Logs are turned off, the report explains that and lists nothing.

Without Redirection, Dirigible SEO keeps its own small record: each missing address, how many times a day it was hit, and the latest page that linked to it. It never records who the visitor was.

Tips

• Hits count every visit: the hosting cache doesn't keep "not found" pages, so each one reaches the site. Bots are left out.
• On a multisite network the log and the plugin's other data belong to each site; deleting the plugin removes them site by site.
• Requests from search engine crawlers, site monitors and scanners aren't listed, nor are missing images, scripts and the like, nor anything you hit while signed in. Only addresses a visitor could reach from a link are kept.
• Check again at the top of the Reports tab refreshes this report along with the others.