I have too many visitors getting "404 Document Not Found"
 

I noticed in my stats that 40.4% of my visitors get the 404 Document Not Found Error. Why is this and what can I do about it? Isn't there some way to put up a page so if a surfer gets the 404 error they can see an ad or something?

I seem to recall having an image call in a css for a background in some kind of element in my standard css template a long time ago. Every site I built off that template could not find the image and if memery serves - which it rarely does - that would produce a 404 in my stats yet not effect the look or load of the site built with that css template at all.

I hope that makes sense. |loony|

favicon.ico missing?

Would be helpful if you have something like awstats that lists the urls/objects that are being reported as 404 and the referring urls - like cd34 mentioned it can be favicon requests, as well as scripts requesting all kinds of cgis etc looking for security holes, and even idiots linking to you incorrectly which would benefit you to correct :)

my biggest source of 404 errors is the missing robots.txt files on most of my domains. I should really get them up someday...

|huh ??

I have awstats, I'll look around some more.

I think I found it. A lot of .gif backgrounds on sites are listed.