For a while i have noticed that the BBC News button on my Google Toolbar has been broken but I assumed that if I waited it would be updated and resolved or the BBC webmaster would notice the thousands of 404 errors produced by http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi.html. But alas it didn’t happen so I decided to fix the error, and also step you through the process of how to fix it for yourself.

The following error page could also be updated to be a bit more useful and even incorporate some RSS feeds that directly link to recent BBC News & BBC Sport stories. 404 Error pages don’t have to be boring and useless they can be tailored to match the companies brand and promote most popular pages or stories of the day.

It would have been much easy for Google to just apply the correct URL and would have been proactive for the BBC to fix the error as instead of going straight to their page I was trained to use Google News. So when the we write about Murdoch versus Google, the BBC are are having a bit of a laugh because issues like this encourage people to use Google News and not go direct.

It is a really easy process to change the button URL but i have laid it out in step by step so even if you are not an expert in updating Google Toolbar this will show you how easy it is for anyone.

Step 1

Right click on the BBC News button in the toolbar and select “Button options” as shown.

Step 2

Now you are presented with the Edit Google Toolbar Custom Button screen.

Step 3

Click the “Use the advanced editor” link shown in red in the image.

Step 4

You can now edit the Google toolbar custom button XML code, but first you need to find the line of code <site> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi.html </site>

Step 5

Select the broken URL “http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi.html”

Step 6

Now Google BBC World news to find the correct URL or copy “http://www.bbcworldnews.com/Pages/default.aspx“.

Step 7

Now Click the “Save To Google Toolbar” button at the bottom of the edit window.

Step 8

You will now be prompted “replace” the existing old code with the broken link, click the replace button.

Step 9

You need to now close the edit window by clicking the “close window” button.

Step 10

The final step is to click the save button at the bottom left of the Google Toolbar Options window.

Step 11 (Success!)

When the click the toolbar button you will now be taken to the BBC World News page.

So thank you for taking the time to visit my blog article on how to fix 404 error pages produced by Google Toolbar buttons, and now you can enjoy the BBC World News again using Google Toolbar.