Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
301 doesn't redirect a page that ends in %20, and others being appended with ?q=
-
I have a product page that ends /product-name**%20** that I'm trying to redirect in this way:
Redirect 301 /products/product-name%20 http://www.site.com/products/product-name
And it doesn't redirect at all. The others, those with %20, are being redirected to a url hybrid of old and new: http://www.site.com/products/product-name**?q=old-url**
I'm using Drupal CMS, and it may be creating rules that counter my entries.
-
I know this is an old thread, but I actually spotted this issue while trying to fix it myself. I was able to fix it by using quotes and a literal space. So for example, instead of
RewriteRule ^/products/product%20name$ http://www.site.com/products/new-url [R=301,L]
use
RewriteRule "^/products/product name$" http://www.site.com/products/new-url [R=301,L]
Hope that helps.
-
I've managed to 301 everything except that pesky %20 url, perhaps because of the %20 or perhaps because that's also the only one in a folder.
Here's what's worked for simple urls such as www.site.com/old-page
RewriteRule ^old-page$ http://www.site.com/new-page [R=301,L]
But the same format for the %20 hasn't worked:
RewriteRule ^/products/product-name%20$ http://www.site.com/products/new-url [R=301,L]
-
I think this is the culprit:
Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]At the moment,
Redirect 301 /old-page http://www.site.com/new-pagecreates
www.site.com/new-page?q=old-pageI have tried the 301s both before the CMS rule and after it, without success.
-
Hmmm... I was going to also suggest trying replacing the %20 with an actual space -
Redirect 301 "/products/product-name " http://www.site.com/products/product-name
Now that you say none of the redirects are working as expected, did you try adding the 301 redirects above the Drupal rules in your .htaccess file? Can you paste the contents of your .htaccess?
-
Thanks for the reply. I tried it but it didn't work, but I given incorrect info in the question, which is now corrected. I had said other 301 were working fine when in fact they weren't. Those without %20 are redirecting to an odd hybrid of urls.
After some searching, I think this has something to do with the drupal CMS and the rules it creates in htaccess.
-
Try putting it in quotes -
Redirect 301 "/products/product-name%20" http://www.site.com/products/product-name
Let me know if that doesn't work...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is there any benefit to changing 303 redirects to 301?
A year ago I moved my marketplace website from http to https. I implemented some design changes at the same time, and saw a huge drop in traffic that we have not recovered from. I've been searching for reasons for the organic traffic decline and have noticed that the redirects from http to https URLs are 303 redirects. There's little information available about 303 redirects but most articles say they don't pass link juice. Is it worth changing them to 301 redirects now? Are there risks in making such a change a year later, and is it likely to have any benefits for rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAdeit0 -
Google Is Indexing my 301 Redirects to Other sites
Long story but now i have a few links from my site 301 redirecting to youtube videos or eCommerce stores. They carry a considerable amount of traffic that i benefit from so i can't take them down, and that traffic is people from other websites, so basically i have backlinks from places that i don't own, to my redirect urls (Ex. http://example.com/redirect) My problem is that google is indexing them and doesn't let them go, i have tried blocking that url from robots.txt but google is still indexing it uncrawled, i have also tried allowing google to crawl it and adding noindex from robots.txt, i have tried removing it from GWT but it pops back again after a few days. Any ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cuarto7150 -
Redirected Old Pages Still Indexed
Hello, we migrated a domain onto a new Wordpress site over a year ago. We redirected (with plugin: simple 301 redirects) all the old urls (.asp) to the corresponding new wordpress urls (non-.asp). The old pages are still indexed by Google, even though when you click on them you are redirected to the new page. Can someone tell me reasons they would still be indexed? Do you think it is hurting my rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | phogan0 -
What Happens If a Hreflang Sitemap Doesn't Include Every Language for Missing Translated Pages?
As we are building a hreflang sitemap for a client, we are correctly implementing the tag across 5 different languages including English. However, the News and Events section was never translated into any of the other four languages. There are also a few pages that were translated into some but not all of the 4 languages. Is it good practice to still list out the individual non-translated pages like on a regular sitemap without a hreflang tag? Should the hreflang sitemap include the hreflang tag with pages that are missing a few language translations (when one or two language translations may be missing)? We are uncertain if this inconsistency would create a problem and we would like some feedback before pushing the hreflang sitemap live.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
301 Redirection and apostrophes in URLs
Hi I am experiencing trouble getting any redirects with apostrophes in the URLs to 301 redirect in order to eliminate 404 errors. I have tried replacing the instance of the apostrophe in the source URL field to %27 and variations of this but to no avail. The site is a wordpress site (the old URLS are legacies from the old Business Catalyst site) and I am using the redirection plug in. I have gone into some detail with a helpful soul here http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-deal-with-apostrophes-in-source-url but unfortunately to no result. If anyone has any idea how to solve this puzzle I would be grateful for the help. Example: http://www.tesselaars.com/blog/Inside_Flowers/post/Online_Marketing_for_Florists_Part_1%E2%80%93_A_Website_You_Won%27t_Regret/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seamoose0 -
DNS or 301 Website Redirect
We are running a marketplace site, so we have thousands of vendors selling their products on our site. Each vendor has a Profile page and we are soon to launch a premium store-front that is white label. Many of these vendors will want to point a custom url to their premium store-front (which is a sub domain of the marketplace) and we are trying to get an understanding of how we should instruct them to point their url in a way that will give the main marketplace site the seo juice. We also want to understand what will show up in the address bar. Will it be their url or our sub domain? Will any of the marketplace seo juice boost their url local listing status?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bloomnation0 -
301 or 302 Redirects to Mobile Site
When it's detected that a mobile device is accessing the site it has the ability to redirect from www.example.com to m.example.com. Does it make more sense to employ a 301 or 302 redirect here? Google says a 301 but does not explain why (although usually I stick to "when in doubt, 301") . It seems like a 302 would prevent passing link juice to the mobile site and having mobile-optimized results also showing up in Google's index. What is the preference here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOTGT0 -
Can penalties be passed via 301 redirect?
I have a well established domain that's been hit with some penalties. It hasn't been nuked off the map, just downgraded, especially on short-tail, one word type queries. I'm planning on redirecting this domain to another well established domain. The domains already have a history of lots of interlinking and are very similar from a subject matter standpoint. I feel that the penalized domain has been hit with an "over-optimization" of link anchor text penalty (I'm hoping it's algorithmic, but it could be manual). My question is if anyone has ever heard of a penalty like this being transferred to another domain through a 301 redirect. My hope is that the penalty just puts a cap on how much juice the redirect can pass, rather than transferring the penalty to the other domain itself. Any thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOMG1