Wouldn’t you agree that any traffic coming to YOUR domain name is YOURS? If you are hosting with hostgator.com consider changing to a host that respects that your traffic is your traffic. I used to host with them, but quickly canceled my account.

1. 404 error

Whenever someone tries to go to a page on your website that does not exist, they get a 404 error page. Just try it out and go to yourdomain.com/soemthingthatdoesnotexist Hostgator by default steals all that 404 traffic to their own 404 page which of couse advertises their service. When I asked them about this, they simply told me to do do all kinds of changes to my .htaccess and setting up my own 404 page in cpanel. Fact is, 404 traffic belongs to YOU and they should NOT steal it. So having it set to steal unless you change some fancy settings is ridiculous! Avoid hostgator!

2. unrouted domains

Whenever you set your domain’s DNS settings to hostgator’s DNS servers, make sure you first set up that domain on your account with them. Otherwise they will just display their own paid search website. Just another little theft scheme which annoyed me.

I would not be surprised if there were more issues with hostgator. Just try someone else!