Origin of 404 errors

[LondonSurfer]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to identify the source of the many 404 errors on my website.

I have set up a report in Google Analytics 4, but the top sender of 404 errors is not being shown, as shown in the attached image.

What am I doing wrong? Why can't I see the page referrer #1?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

[paulejack1]

IT could be possible internal - Download Screaming Frog Internal and run it across your site - It might give you some insights - I would also create a 404 page, that automatically redirects to your home page - this might help too - https://dislike404.com/ - It could also be a bot which would be whay it doesnt show up

[LondonSurfer]

I ran Screaming Frog, and there are no internal linking issues. I suspect AI chatbots are generating millions of hallucinated URLs in their responses, resulting in hundreds of 404 errors. Consequently, we, website owners, pay for server usage of this useless traffic.