When a user requests a page that does not exist or cannot be found, the server will typically return a 404 error page. In the world of web analytics, where we analyze user behavior on websites, we find ourselves in a situation where we don’t understand why there is a spike in traffic for a specific site and realize unexpected things.
For instance, when someone starts circulating a nonexisting link on a website on social media, people tend to click on it and refresh it multiple times. This creates a massive spike in traffic to this non-existent site on the website. This is also referred to as a “404 party”.
In another instance, a website received a lot of traffic when it was mentioned in one of the TV shows. Unless it is a planned advertisement, one would never guess why there is a massive increase in traffic to a website.
One other funny instance is when the robot web scrapper gets stuck in a loop. One will see a lot of random navigation pattern, clicks and usage but it is hard to figure out who and why is someone using your website this way.