In reviewing my stats, I find a .gif file with 600 visits, 800 hits, 1010KB bandwidth for the month of November .. except I removed this image from the site when I redesigned it 10 months ago!!

How could a file that doesn't exist keep getting 'hit.' Would hits register if some page is asking for the file .. even if the file no longer exists? I did a 'find' of the entire site and find no reference to this image in the code and have 'disallowed' indexing of it in my robots file.

Thanks
Jayell
(Couldn't figure out where to post this .. if there's a better place, please let me know.)

If you didn't remove the file from your server people might be linking to it.

As mentioned in my original message, I removed the file from the server 10 months ago.

Jayell

Yes, it will still register as a hit. Any request to the server will register as a hit, file or no file.

The reason it is still being requested is probably that some of your visitors have cached copies of your pages that still refer to that image.

But the bandwidth shouldn't be that high .. if the file really is not there though, right? I understand the 'hits' .. but not the bandwidth. That almost suggests that the file IS there. I'm a little concerned the old Webmaster might have left a backdoor into the site (he used to run some of his personal stuff off a local club site), although I haven't seen toooo many odd files that I don't recognize.

Jayell

check the logs. If you will find the request to the file is receiving an error or it is actually sending the file. If it is error, the file is not present. Else you need to check the location of the file.

There will be a tiny bit of bandwidth used (the request and the 404 response if the file isn't actually there) but it will be pretty academic in comparison to if the file was there.