

Google hijacking 404 error pages - hollywoodcole
http://seoker.com/2008/02/11/google-hijacking-404-error-pages/

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boredguy8
I don't know what it is with people thinking they have a right to control my
web experience. From people demanding they be able to show you advertisements
(or else you're 'stealing') to this chap demanding that he get to show you his
404. A "right" to control what I see as a result of a status code? It's mind
boggling. What my application choses to do with the status codes your server
return is my business, not yours.

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jkush
IE 7 does the same thing. A few months ago we had to set up a special 404 page
for a broken link that was accidentally emailed out to hundreds of people. It
was simple, the 404 page would check to see if the requested url was the bad
link sent via email, if it was, it would redirect to the appropriate page. If
not, we'd show a 404 page.

Worked great in FF but totally broke in IE7. Why? Because the 404 page size
was under 1Kb, IE7 decided that our 404 page wasn't informative enough and
supplied it's own.

The solution, as stupid as it sounds was to add enough white space to the file
until it was larger than 1Kb.

And, you know, also stop sending broken links out.

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ash
303 or 307 redirection had to be used in the first place, I think.

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run4yourlives
301 no? It's a bad url after all...

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jkush
Yeah, you're both right. This was a quick and dirty because people were
starting to open emails. We ended up fixing it for real after our quick and
dirty solution. The only reason I mentioned it to begin with was to point out
that IE7 hijacks 404 pages too.

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cstejerean
Is this for all 404 pages? If you have a custom 404 page does Google still
take over? I certainly don't mind Google removing the plain old 404 default
pages (or even better the pages with got 404 trying to locate the 404 page).

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aaco
I don't use Google Toolbar, but I found a link explaining that you can disable
this feature:

[http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?hl=en...](http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75816)

Anyway, if you're having this issue, you probably agreed on this behavior when
you accepted their license :-).

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msteigerwalt
Exactly. This is something a user of Google Toolbar might have cause to gripe
about (assuming they weren't told in advance), but not someone who owns a
website with 404s that get redirected.

However, for people who like to put sensitive user data in GET variables
(coughMonstercough), this is yet another reason why they shouldn't do that.

~~~
bp001
Where it becomes a problem for people who own a website is when this behavior
causes additional support calls due to a more informative 404 page being
masked.

It will likely result in incidences where support staff have a checklist of
"do you have the Google Toolbar installed? Uninstall it first." However, I
don't imagine there will be a ton of cases like this.

I do think it is a mistake that the Google Toolbar enables this by default.
Taking this power away from the website owners is not good. And let's be
honest, At least 50% of people who have the toolbar installed are not
technically savvy and a good portion of them probably didn't even intend to
install the software (it was bundled with another download, etc).

Also, I don't see a problem with the practice of putting sensitive data in GET
variables if the website is protected by SSL - Am I missing something? Edit:
Thanks for the reply aaco, those are both valid reasons and I appreciate the
insight.

~~~
pchristensen
"At least 50% of people who have the toolbar installed are not technically
savvy and a good portion of them probably didn't even intend to install the
software (it was bundled with another download, etc)" - If you think this
can't be possible, then you don't talk to enough normal people!

~~~
bp001
The thing that makes me say that a lot of people don't even realize this
software is installed is due to two main scenarios:

1\. When downloading other software, I have seen several instances where the
Google toolbar is bundled, and you have to go into an advanced menu to de-
select it. 2\. Many OEMs are now shipping computers to people with the Google
Toolbar installed.

I believe these two cases account for a large number of the installs. Possibly
even greater than the number of users who intentionally go out and download
it, but more likely in the 30% range of new installs.

Of course, I have no real numbers on this, and so it is pretty much a guess.

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eznet
Nothing new... I wrote up Charter Communications about a year ago for doing
the same thing... I guess its no better (or worse) when Google does it... Must
admit.. it pissed me off the first time I got the Charter/Yahoo page when
entering a search command in my address bar... used to be the case that with
Firefox you could enter a term in and the displayed page was the "I'm feeling
lucky" Google result... after this hi-jacking started that functionality went
out the window... shame.. I liked it... I am guessing since Charter is already
hi-jacking my 404s, the Google jacking won't affect me anyways :)

Here is my original write up of the creeps...
<http://blog.eznet.frih.net/?p=62>

Here is Charters hi-jack
[http://www11.charter.net/search?qo=asdasd.asd&rn=3RjeJZ7...](http://www11.charter.net/search?qo=asdasd.asd&rn=3RjeJZ7yaDEE6YQ)

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apgwoz
If it's because of the Google toolbar, what features does it have that can't
be replicated with Firefox plugins? Why do people insist on installing the
Google toolbar, or any other toolbar for that matter? Browsers are slow
enough!

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jraines
The StumbleUpon toolbar is pretty sweet . . . just rate sites as you go along
and then your Stumbles will be like opening presents.

~~~
marcus
Didn't know they used collaborative filtering, I thought they just used it to
rank sites. If you are right they might be worth investigating.

~~~
jraines
I'm pretty sure they do.

Here's the post that convinced me to try it out:
[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/28/12-filtering...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/12/28/12-filtering-
tips-for-better-information-in-half-the-time-rss-delicious-and-stumbleupon/)

