Checking my 404 errors today I have around 40 pages listed which all start with /blank plus one of my page names

for example, I have a page called downloads.html in the root dir. So the error url is /blankdownloads.html.

I am a little suspicious as there is also two weird websites showing up as incoming links - mymudspace.com and mymustangsite.com, which between them probably have about 40-odd page referrals, so it seems like the referrals from these sites (which also look to be made by the same person) have landed on these "blank" pages.

What's going on here? I've denied access to the two sites - anything else I can do?

Just some muppet messed up programming their spam bot.

To explain it a bit further, 404 is the status code returned by the server to a request.
100-199 is the "informational" range
200-299 is the "successful" range
300-399 is the "redirection" range
400-499 is the "error" range.
500-599 is the "server error" range

404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. This status code is commonly used when the server does not wish to reveal exactly why the request has been refused, or when no other response is applicable.

You have a full list there, on the w3c http protocol reference:
http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

Thanks Tripy - I kinda know that stuff - was just wondering about the urls rather than the code itself, but thanks anyway

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Just some muppet messed up programming their spam bot.

beats me why they bother! Thanks Chris