April 28th 2017
Smarter handling of missing pages
We've updated the way that Insites handles so-called "404" pages (pages which are not found).
Insites now always tests a 404 page for every website that it tests. To do this, Insites invents a made-up web address belonging to your website, which - because it does not exist - returns a "page not found" error. This 404 page is highlighted to make this clear:
Your normal tests are run on this 404 page, including spelling and broken links, making it easy to identify problems on the one error page that every website must have.
Insites now ignores links to other 404 pages that it finds, except for:
- The Broken links test. Links to 404 pages are still always shown here as broken links.
- The Broken pages test. If a page used to work, but is now a 404, the page is shown here as missing.
For many customers, this will mean they will see a reduction in the number of broken pages in their site.
Note that these changes only take effect the next time that your reports are run.