Terminology in 404 logs: Domain and Referrer

  • Resolved bkwineper

    (@bkwineper)


    4 years ago

    I wonder if you could clarify the terminology used in the 404 log page.

    There’s “Domain” and there’s “Referrer”.

    I understand that “Referrer” is the page (or rather, domain) where the URL that caused the 404 exist. (In other words “there’s a link to this non-existent page on this domain”)

    But what does the column “Domain” stand for?

    In many cases it is simply empty, but in quite a few cases it shows “https://www.bkwinetours.com”, i.e. the domain where I am using this plugin.

    (It can hardly signify the domain where the “Source URL” is, since all “Source URLs” are on that domain.)

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Plugin Author John Godley

    (@johnny5)

    It does signify the domain where the source URL is, and not all source URLs are on that domain. This may include multi-site setups and people who redirect requests for external domains.

    Thread Starter bkwineper

    (@bkwineper)

    Hi John,

    Thanks for your super-quick reply.

    Yes, I see now, when I look a bit further, that all recent ones have “my” domain there, but older ones are blank. That must be because before the plugin update it did not record that field. Should have figured. ??

    But I am a bit puzzled by the “Referrer” field.

    A lot of the time it is empty and I would guess that means that it’s from a bot, so no referring URL.

    Sometimes it shows some odd site, usually site.ru, which I am guessing is because of some kind of spam site on that domain.

    But what I don’t understand is this:

    Sometimes it shows my own site, either with just the domain (https://www.bkwinetours.com/) with the “source URL” given as “/asset-manifest.json”, “/plus/mytag_js.php”, or more “normal” Source URLs such as “/wordpress/wp-admin/”.

    Neither of those exist and have never existed on the site, so it is strange that the site’s domain is given as the Referrer, isn’t it?

    The other thing that I find odd is that https://www.google.com/ is given as Referrer, also with Source URLs that don’t exist. Why would there be Google pages with non-existent URLs…?

    I realise that this is probably not something that has to do with the plugin itself, but is probably just a question of how 404s are reported by the system.

    But I thought I’d ask anyway. ??

    Plugin Author John Godley

    (@johnny5)

    The referrer field is filled with whatever data is in the HTTP_REFERER header when a request is made to your server. There is no guarantee this is accurate or relevant, but it is recorded all the same.

    Thread Starter bkwineper

    (@bkwineper)

    Thanks John.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • The topic ‘Terminology in 404 logs: Domain and Referrer’ is closed to new replies.