Yahoo is hijacking my 404 pages

happety · 07-13-2008, 12:57 AM

Dare I say outraged? Because that's what I am right now - And I normally don't throw that around too loosely. Before I go off the deep end, though, I wanted to get everyone's thoughts on this. I want to know if I'm overreacting or if my outrage is justified...

A few days ago, I updated my Yahoo Toolbar to the latest version. Nothing exciting... A few minutes ago, I hit a dead link on a random website and a Yahoo branded 404 error page pops up. A little curious as I wasn't aware they offered this service to site owners and this didn't appear to be a Yahoo hosted site.

I find out this is a new "feature" of the Yahoo Toolbar called 404 assistant. I go to the Yahoo help page and find this.

Quote:

Why am I seeing a Yahoo! generated 404 page?
As you browse the Internet, some sites have broken navigation. This typically results in a what is known as a 404 page.

The Yahoo! Toolbar will help you with these 404 pages in certain cases where the page is generic. The Toolbar will present you with options to perform a Site Search or an Internet Search.

Site Search - You can search the specific Website for specific content by choosing this option.

Internet Search - You can search the Internet for the specific keyword you enter.

Okay, though I don't agree with the practice, I can kind of understand how that would help the average person. I took special note of the quote "In certain cases where the page is generic."

So, I hopped over to my site - I have a custom 404 page with various links and a google custom search engine (my site only.)

What do you know - I get the same Yahoo 404 page. This is what upset me. As a site owner, I expect to have complete control over what the user experiences while on my site, even 404 errors. Now, Yahoo has taken that duty over. In fact, after going to multiple major sites (including google) I couldn't find one that Yahoo didn't take over their 404 page. I know most of these sites have their own custom error pages. (too bad Yahoo won't let me see them.)

Now, I know that I can disable this "feature" on my toolbar client, but most everyone that happens to have the Yahoo toolbar installed will never think to do that or care to. I don't want the user taken away from my site because Yahoo decided to hijack my error page.

What worries me even more is this might be a trend with others following, search engines, ISPs, etc. That's all we need - hijacked 404 pages with sponsored results - results that could be that of a competitor!

Beyond being a site owner - simply being a consumer, I have a huge problem with companies taking over pages that don't belong to them.

Am I being unreasonable on this? Do you think my outrage is justified?

Mandi · 07-13-2008, 08:57 AM

Well, I don't know if it makes it less infuriating or not, but IE has actually been doing something similar for a long, long time - browser wide, not just in an add-on tool bar.

I think we can't possibly design for every browser tweak people can install these days. The solution lies in educating people about how they are restricting themselves from the full features of a website, when they use certain "tools."

I mean, what is it you feel you get out of the Toolbar? There must be something compelling, that made you install it in the first place.

*johnfl68* · 07-13-2008, 11:34 AM

I have not seen a problem with my custom 404's in IE - but I also just noticed I didn't put 404 in the title, just the page.

Also in searching for a trigger to bypass yahoo's 404 as a site owner, I saw that the new Google Toolbar does this as well.

Hopefully if enough site owners complain to Yahoo and Google, they will publish some code so that your custom page comes up. Hopefully!

John

happety · 07-13-2008, 01:27 PM

As an experiment, I installed the latest Google Toolbar (5 beta) and disabled all of Yahoo Toolbar's functions. I did not change any default settings on the Google one.

After going to my site and forcing a 404 page, the Google toolbar did not interfere at all, nor did it on any site I tried. I did find out that Google has a feature called "Suggestions for navigation errors" which brings up their own search page in cases of mistyped URLs - for example if I type in google.om, instead of the DNS error, Google will display their own results. Once the primary URL is typed correctly, any dead link or mistype will take the user to the site's 404 page, not Google's.

I'm okay with this functionality. Both my ISP and OpenDNS (which I use) do the same thing. It still falls into the same category technically, but if someone mistypes my primary URL, they're not getting to my site anyway. All of these search sites help find my site. They aren't taking visitors away from my site simply because they mistyped a deep link.

On a side note, to answer Mandi, I've used Yahoo toolbar probably as long as it has existed. I used to use Yahoo for everything. Now, I only use it for the cascading bookmarks, which I love. There are probably other's that have this, but why change. That brings up the point - I could uninstall Yahoo Toolbar as a protest, but that doesn't help my site any. It's not my browsing habits, it's those of my customers.

Regarding John, that's a good point - hopefully Yahoo will come out with code that will force a bypass of this and I'll keep my eye out. What saddens me -I have always felt that any complaint/suggestion I give to Yahoo simply falls on deaf ears. Whether true or not, at least I get the impression Google is listening to me.

Mandi · 07-14-2008, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by happety

That brings up the point - I could uninstall Yahoo Toolbar as a protest, but that doesn't help my site any. It's not my browsing habits, it's those of my customers.

Oh, believe me, that was my point too

. I don't use it myself, so had to ask what you were using it for - on the assumption that your visitors also get the same value out of the tool.

*ryount* · 07-14-2008, 08:15 PM

In the last few months I have noticed that Dell has been installing an address error redirector on new systems. It redirects to a Dell/Google page with ads. This even comes on business systems that are usually free of stuff like that.

cluksha · 09-15-2008, 02:27 PM

The real funny part is that not only does IE, Yahoo AND google do all this with the browser and /or installed toolbars - - > But Comcast and Verizon have both been doing this for years as well.

So as angry as we all are - an I infuriated - they are all doing it and no one is stopping them.

Chris

*WebmasterTed* · 09-20-2008, 01:16 AM

I just fired up IE7, correctly typed my site's url and then added on several variations of a slash and nonexistent pages. Each time the custom 404 page I had created came up just fine.

Did Microsoft mend its ways with IE7 (or earlier) or am I missing something where the error occurs under slightly different circumstances than my test cases?

Andilinks · 09-20-2008, 04:18 AM

I get my own custom 404 with a misspelling of my pages too, but...

I just typed in (IE7) a common misspelling of my domain and got a generic page with all my topic headings, I don't think there's anything I can do about this. "PDXPrivateNames.com LLC" owns about 2,954 other domains. Some of the links return a live.com search result, smells like MSFT.

*WebmasterTed* · 09-20-2008, 12:46 PM

I see what you mean. To be strictly accurate I'd describe it more as a generic page with headings quite similar to yours.

Anyway, irritating that they do that, but less offensive to my mind than if it occurred with a correct spelling of your domain but an incorrect or misspelled page. Hopefully most visitors trying to reach your site come through a link or bookmark (or type carefully

)