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Track 'page not found' errors

Sometimes, a visitor to your site may try to access a page or a document that does not exist. Use Google Analytics to help you work out why.

Occasionally, site visitors may try to find a page or an asset that does not exist on your site. The visitor may simply miss-type a valid address, or they may follow an out-of-date link to your site from an external site. You can use Google Analytics to track instances of this to help you work out why visitors are struggling to find what they are looking for on your site.

Tip

If a particular URL is commonly shown in the report, you can add a FriendlyURL to help visitors find the resource that they are looking for.

Use

On the dashboard, choose Content -> Content Drilldown:

Choosing Content from the menu

and

Choosing Content Drilldown from the menu

In the Filter Page box, type NotFound (no space between the words) and click Go:

Entering NotFound in the box

You are then presented with a list of all pages that visitors have tried to access:

The list of pages not found

The page is shown after the “page=” part of the URL. In the example above, three visitors tried to access the non-existent document www.cubik.co.uk/this/does/not/exist.pdf.

To further analyse the not found pages, you can click each one to be taken to the Google Analytics Content Detail pagewhich will help you work out how visitors are arriving at the invalid addresses.