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Use: ErrorDocument 404 /404.html where 404.html is your error document page!  If the page does not exist then it should return a 404 status code and then automatically redirect to this page.

if you already haven't, make sure you look at adding a homepage canonical tag too

Hi This is a valid concert. As Mat correctly stated, Googlebot is not easily manipulated. Having said that, Googlebot impersonation is a sad fact. Recently we released a Fake Googlebot study in which we've found out that 21% of all Googlebot visits are made by different impersonators - fairly "innocent" SEO tools used for competition check-ups, various spammer and even malicious scanner that will use Googlebot user-agent to try and slip in between the cracks and lay a path for a more serious attack to come (DDoS, IRA and etc). To identify your visitor can use Botopedia's "IP check tool"  - it will cross-verify the IP and help reveal most fake bots.  (I`ve already searched for 66.249.71.25 and it's legit - see attached image) Still, IPs can be spoofed. So, if in doubt, I would promote a "better safe than sorry" approach and advise you to look into free bad bot protection services (there are several good ones). GL TBHPK

It's pretty easy to create a favicon.ico file. Favicons can be many sizes from 16x16 to 64x64 and, since you just want to get rid of your 404 results, I suggest going with 16x16 to start. This website is great for creating one without much work. Otherwise, you can use any image editor to create a small image and then rename it to "favicon.ico". Whichever method you use, I suggest creating a favicon that looks like your logo much like SEOmoz has done with theirs. Once you've created your favicon, upload it to your server. Edit: I should also note you can remove the reference to the favicon.ico file altogether. To do this you would remove the following HTML from your webpages that are producing your 404 errors: <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">shortcut icon</a>" href="favicon.ico" /> Your second 404 looks to be from a missing script that is often used to present Flash content. This file is also generated when you use Dreamweaver to create a webpage that includes Flash. You can either remove the call to that script from the HTML or look for a copy of the file online and upload it to your server.

Yes, that is correct. Once you have it set up, you can test what pages are blocked in your GWT account. Health > Blocked URLs > select which bot you want to test at the bottom of the page. Resources: Google's bots - http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1061943 WMT Blocked URL testing - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/robots-analysis

Not sure if that would work, but you can test by changing your robots.txt and running a test in GWT > Health > Blocked URLs You might also be interested in specifying specific URL paraments (e.g. /?sort=name&order=asc > can block sort and order parameters) from within GWT (Configuration > URL Parameters) Learn more about parameters - https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1235687

There is also the chance that an external website is linking to you  incorrectly in which case you you you could contact them and ask them to change it. As Moosa suggested a 301 redirect would be the simplest solution.