Oops, this link apears broken- DNS Server Error - is an easy problem to fix, once you know why it's happening.

And, if you've just installed Google Chrome (I'm still on IE7,) your chances are even higher for getting this error message.

The day after Christmas, I couldn't log into a single Lunar Pages site. Was I freaked - you betcha! I kept getting a - Oops! This Link Appears Broken - DNS Server Error.

The links weren't broken, Google was redirecting my input to a custom redirect page. This was annoying because it took me a while to figure out what was going on. All of the search results that looked promising, gave me a, guess what, Oops! This Link Appears Broken - DNS Server Error.

I finally tracked down the cause of the error and the cure for it.

I had just reinstalled I.E 7. Believe it or not, for once this wasn't because of a Microsoft's fault. I also installed the latest version of Google's toolbar. On the toolbar there is a little icon that looks like this:

Click on this and select Options. Where it says Provide Suggestions on Navigation Errors - deselect it. That will cure this fake error messages.

Why do I say fake error messages?

According to Google - http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?answer=75816&hl=en - this page was provided because the page didn't exist and the website you keyed in had no custom 404 page. Except all my sites have custom 404 pages, so I shouldn't be seeing Oops! This Link Appears Broken - DNS Server Error. So what's the story?

Apparently, if your page load time is slow enough, this message has been popping up. Google gets to provide people who were going to your site with a custom search page, and you get to wonder again, why your publisher numbers are falling.

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Google did announce this "enhancement" to their toolbar. With the number of people installing Google Chrome and the Google Toolbar rising, the redirect to a custom Google search page will increase.

So why the problem logging into Lunar Pages sites? The slowness of the San Diego data center is a well known issue for Lunar Pages clients. With the majority of it's servers moving to San Diego, load times have increased significantly, randomly. It's an off again, on again problem - which apparently was on again the day after Christmas.

Hopefully, this will provide a huge kick in rear for service providers to get their acts together in terms of speed, as I've been getting this message accross a number of different web sites, and they can't all be LP sites.

Unfortunately, for many PPC sites, Google is the only game in town, in terms of return on investment.

So, if you're seeing Oops! This Link Appears Broken - DNS Server Error, go find that little wrench icon and apply the fix!