According to reports at DigitalPoint forums, the latest beta release of Google Toolbar hijacks 404 pages as shown in the image above.
It’s not clear from the reports as to whether this occurs only when no customized 404 page is available on a specific site, or with every 404 page. I also can’t test the theory, least the only beta version of Google Toolbar I could find was for Internet Explorer.
The Google 404 page offers some hints as to what a user could do next, and also provides a Google search box.
If true (and there’s pages of people saying that it is), Google being helpful (which I’m guessing will be their justification) really goes against their do no evil mantra once again. For 404 pages to be hijacked in this way, be it in all cases or only some, removes the rights of the webmaster to decide what a user sees when visiting all parts of their website, and that’s something many will find wrong.
(via Chris Garrett, image credit SEOker)
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I don’t see this as an awfully bad solution, but I agree that web site authors should have full control over their own error pages, including 404’s. What I wonder, then, is how Google is able to know the difference between a custom 404 and a generic one. Will it come stocked with samples of Apache’s and IIS’ default 404 pages and match the returned 404 page with them? How else will it be able to know the difference?
It’s not like there’s anything inherently different from a general web server-generated 404 and a custom one. A custom 404 can even be based on a general one, where only portions of the text has been replaced or CSS has been added to make it match better with the rest of the site’s overall design.
If Google manages to replace all generic 404 pages with their own custom one, I’d just say good for them and their users. Google Toolbar is free and an explicit choice (although often a very subtle one) to have, so I don’t think this is bad. If they hijack all 404’s, though, this is pretty annoying.
It’s a good idea. Google will capitalize from this idea, but it also happens to provide a value to users. I have no problem with it since it doesn’t mess with my custom 404 page.
so why does’nt google use that page for their own 404s?
On my site you can find all kinds of information about this.
Duncan
Just ignore all these Google employees posting a defense of their toolbar and trying to bash you.
I work in the toolbar industry and I can tell you that users HATE behavior like this. Google will learn that soon enough. 404 and DNS hijacking are the two mots retarded things a toolbar maker can do.
The problem this creates is that on my custom 404 page I have included the directory to my site so they can click the link to where they were wanting to go and can still find MY site.
It doesn’t matter that I have a properly configured and helpful 404 page, this diverts all the broken link errors or typo errors to the Google 404 and that friends is where it is thieving traffic for itself!
It really is pretty irresponsible to post such a story when it would be really easy to test it and see whether it is the case or not. As many have mentioned it’s a non-issue because it’s not overriding custom 404 pages. Why are you not able to do some simple research, or even enlist someone else to check for you? I guess there’s a lot of value in sensationalist headlines without basis.
This is not new at all. We wrote about this specific issue on the Google webmaster blog a couple months ago to let people know about it
http://googlewebmastercentral......tures.html
So your telling me you wrote this story without even varifying it yourself? Come on.. get over to a PC with Internet Explorer and test the beta toolbar yourself.
WOW..Google is really looking for any new avenue to push its search. This could be an interesting battle ground. What stops Microsoft from disabling this in future IE versions?
There’s a Firefox plugin that does _just_ custom error page interception called
ErrorZilla
I have it, and use it frequently. Upon receiving a 404 it displays a page with links to retry the request, check for a coral cache version, check the GOOG cache version, check the Wayback machine version, run ping against the site, run a traceroute to the site, and finally to check the whois info on the site.
IIRC the whois link is currently broken. The other options are all useful.
If a user wants to override the default 404 page, what’s the problem? If a publisher wants to create tools to help a user do that, like GOOG is, what’s the problem?
The only people who should be upset about this are link pharmers that host hundreds of pr0n ads on their 404 pages… Duncan… *cough*
Dear Most TechCrunch Readers:
This is a blog. They don’t have an obligation to you to fact check every little thing. If that’s what you want go read businessweek or something.
They throw things out there and people comment on them, and together the story is formed and massaged.
As a result and unofficially on behalf of Duncan, goF yourself.
FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMM!
in an effort to “report it first” you have once again proven that you are in no way, shape or form anything even remotely similar to a real journalist or reporter…at least pick up a phone, or wait for an email reply from a source or something - anything - before wasting time with this shit…every wordpress and drupal install has a default and custom 404 page - why didn’t you personally just install and try it out on some random sites? duh.
And from the blog post, because some people won’t bother to read it:
“404 errors with default error pages
When a visitor tries to reach your content with an invalid URL and your server returns a short, default error message (less than 512 bytes), the Toolbar will suggest an alternate URL to the visitor. If this is a general problem in your website, you will see these URLs also listed in the crawl errors section of your Webmaster Tools account.
If you choose to set up a custom error page, make sure it returns result code 404. The content of the 404 page can help your visitors to understand that they tried to reach a missing page and provides suggestions regarding how to find the content they were looking for. When a site displays a custom error page the Toolbar will no longer provide suggestions for that site. You can check the behavior of the Toolbar by visiting an invalid URL on your site with the Google Toolbar installed.”
Verisign 404 Revisited?
Another reason to ensure that be it IE, FF, Opera, Safari you simply DO NOT install any Google, Yahoo or Microsoft Toolbars.
This article really shows that you have no idea what you are talking about. Your *browser* does this 9 times out of 10 when all the site returns is a 404 code. Google Toolbar is just making the information more useful. If you’re a webmaster and you want a custom 404 page, then send it, and it will be displayed. Thanks for the ignorant FUD.
To me, the ‘Google 404′ is a function of their software. A user installed that software. Good, bad or otherwise, a user wanted to be the tool, err, use that tool. You get with it what comes with it. I’m sure if you uninstall the toolbar, 404’s will be fine again…
Sorry guys - but shouldn’t somebody at TechCrunch actually check this stuff before reporting it?
Here is a rumor and I can’t test it doesn’t exactly exemplify great journalism. It’s not like checking it would have been that hard…
Duncan, I know you like posting extremely provocative stuff without fact-checking it, what EVER, but the *VERY* least you could do is update the original post with more information as it comes in. It’s been… how many hours now?
Christ, without that you’re like the Fox News of the web-blogging.
Seriously man, don’t be Fox News. Fox News shouldn’t be Fox News.
The content of the 404 page can help your visitors to understand that they tried to reach a missing page and provides suggestions regarding how to find the content they were looking for.
I did a quick post to walk through how this feature works, with screenshots:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.....e-toolbar/
But the short answer is that customized 404 pages (> 512 bytes) aren’t changed (as others on the thread have pointed out).
Hi,
I think you got it wrong here.
I have a website, where i use 404 error page, to have SEO friendly url’s and Google toolbar does not give any error or we can say does not hijack it.
The 404 request is first handled by the Webserver, so if webmaster wants to handle 404 pages in some way he can do it without bothering about Google Toolbar.
If in case the 404 bad request is not handles by Webserver (Webmaster) then it’s gonna show that 404 page in IE anyways, and its always good to have a clean error message with some suggestions rathar then simple 404 page not found kind of thing.
In case it’s still unclear, a webmaster can add the following line in .htaccess file
ErrorDocument 404 /redirect.php
to redirect any 404 page (missing page on the host) to redirect.php page.
So there is nothing to worry and webmasters won’t have any knock on affect of this thing.
Shows you the power of google.Even error pages are being hijacked.If this happens on customized pages as well.Then this must be a interference.
Duncan,
The only thing that is hijacked is the 404 page that IE displays. If you have a custom 404 page that is greater than 512 bytes, it will be displayed.
Come on, admit your error and move on.
At the end of the day, Google is a for-profit company wanting to make money like everyone else. Microsoft used to have the image Google has now as the angels of the industry. Sooner or later, Google will be no different.
–
Tech4um.com - Technology Forum for Anything and Everything Tech Related - MP3 Players, Video Games, Computers, Phones etc
I’m guessing it won’t be long before the virus scanners treat the google toolbar as a virus
This is pretty much as bad as DNS hijacking [that verisign did a few yrs ago, and more recently ISPs like earthlink started doing]. I’m surprised we haven’t heard more about this, this really sucks. Perhaps Google is finally employing “suits” as prod managers, not “geeks”, no self-respecting geek would hijack a 404 page.
Where are the GoogleAds on the screenshot or is this still to come?
This is for your own good people. Google does no evil and they know better than you do in any case.
I think Google is aiding in usability and capitalizing on it. Good for friggin’ them. No average user should be bothered with error messages, and if Google can plug that usability hole with some value, then I say, take the revenue and run.
There’s no excuse to expose technology failures to the masses. The masses should not have to worry about what a 404 error is, and they should never realize that they have a bad URL. The “web” (Google-powered, or whoever) should be assisting people and helping them find what they need to find. Errors are failures, and users should be sheltered from failures. As architects of the web, that’s part of our responsibility.
Simple. Elegant. Usable.
Jon
Like my philosophy? Hire me as your user experience maverick: emailme@myself.com. Good rates, tremendous value.
This post has some clarifications:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.....e-toolbar/
This would be awfully wrong. But hey, why does Google care? More FREE advertising! (at the expense of hijacked webmasters) Man, they take every chance they can get to shamefully promote their brand image.
Why are there uninformed comments still? For the umpteenth time, custom 404s aren’t replaced.
Secondly, I’m disappointed in the original poster for not even testing it out, although you really seemed to imply the general practice was unsavory.
Which leads me to my final point of this functionality being super useful over regular unuseful 404s.
But hey, you got a lot of traffic right? I guess that was the case. Misinform people and stand back.
google can use this data and register a sh#$tload of domains and make all the arbitrage money themselves.
For the first time I saw this, I was clicking on a Google search result item, so I thought it just meant to tell you that the result link was broken. But then I saw it even if I type in an address directly, and I thought I might call it a hijacking.
Welcome to Techcrunch the new anti-google propaganda machine sponsored by M$
Come on peoples. Internet Explorer replaces the default 404 error page, too, but I don’t see you complaining. And Google replaces it with more helpful hints! o.O
I would like to send a “raspberry” to everyone who complained about this webmaster starting the dialog about this problem/nonproblem.
It was here that I discovered that I needed to up the size of my custom 404 to greater than 512 bytes. Since I did, this is no longer a problem.
I am sure it never was a problem for you mere surfers.
It was a problem for webmasters and I thank techcrunch for supplying me with a solution!
I don’t see how it could be a problem for webmasters either… If someone can’t be bothered to spend more than .5kB on their custom 404-page (really, 512 bytes is NOTHING, after all), which people are going to see whenever ANYTHING goes wrong, then such a person isn’t even worth the TITLE of webmaster. At least Google then offers the user some solutions.
They should be honored for that!
Not only does google hijack 404 pages, but if you have an iframe within your page and the page that is pulled into that iframe results in a 404, even if the page that contains the iframe is working properly, google hijacks the ENTIRE page with their custom 404. unbelievably lame!
here’s no excuse to expose technology failures to the masses. The masses should not have to worry about what a 404 error is, and they should never realize that they have a bad URL. The “web” (Google-powered, or whoever) should be assisting people and helping them find what they need to find. Errors are failures, and users should be sheltered from failures. As architects of the web, that’s part of our responsibility.
On the same note…
I live in Arlington, Texas and just noticed that Time Warner Cable (Road Runner High Speed Online) has hijacked all URL’s that aren’t registered. The html title of the page that comes up is “Website Suggestions.” What a joke. It has a Yahoo search at the very top and the very bottom (jeez, imagine that), Sponsored Results and Web Results in the middle. But around the edges it is totally whored out. Generic monetization out the wazoo. The only reason people won’t be able to gripe is because you can opt out of the “service” (but you have to go to Road Runner and log into your internet account to do it). Is this the new trend? Is everybody going to try this until people just give up?
RE: #93
Well, I just figured out you actually don’t have to log in to your Road Runner account. Looks like it sends you to http://ww23.rr.com/prefs.php and maybe sets a cookie. Anyway, it still pisses me off that Time Warner is sorta-kinda hijacking non-existent domain error pages (and my browser).
Google has a service that has a search function for your 404.shtml pages, so im gonna gess that this is only if the site doesn’t have a 404 page… i could be wrong, but yea i don’t like this i’d rather see a regular old 404 page so that i know that google ISN’T doing anything to block anything…. my 404 is very basic atm.. but if you want to see it try “http://www.darthneo.com/gmod server” (thats not actual folder/file)
one night i was on the computer & the next day google was wipe out &my tool bar was going how come we tryed everything nothing worked please help betty green