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Tracking 404 Not Found Error Pages ​

Tracking 404 error pages is a common task for site owners. It lets you know how often visitors land on a pages that doesn't exist, the path of the pages, and filter your dashboard accordingly. Pirsch allows you to automate this task by placing a JavaScript snippet on your website.

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Tracking 404 error pages count towards your billable monthly page views.

Adding Tracking to 404 Error Pages ​

Navigate to the settings page on the dashboard and select the Integration tab. Copy the code snippet for your domain and add it to the head section of each page you want to track file downloads on. Here is a simple example on what it will look like. You can use the advanced options on the settings page to customize the snippet.

html
<script defer src="https://api.pirsch.io/pa.js"
    id="pianjs"
    data-code="zddEQ4e6QGDno9GCe6dofGgWARPEyJWt"></script>

The script will also track outbound links and file downloads by default. If you don't want this behaviour, you can disable it by adding the data-disable-outbound-links and data-disable-downloads parameters.

After you have added the script, trigger the 404 error event. You need to do this on each 404 error page. There is no way for the script to figure out if the content was found or not. You can add the trigger from your server, or just statically place it on the site, if you redirect if a page is not found. Place the following script somewhere in the <body> tag of your HTML.

html
<script>
    document.addEventListener("load", () => pirschNotFound());
</script>

Analyzing 404 Error Pages on Your Dashboard ​

404 error pages will be tracked as events on your dashboard. By default, they will be displayed as 404 Page Not Found, but you can change that by setting the data-not-found-event-name parameter. Expanding the event will reveal the pages that couldn't be found.

404 Error Pages

Click an entry in the details view to filter the dashboard. The Event Pages panel lists all pages the file has been downloaded on.

404 Error Page Paths