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 redirect relative or absolute path?
-
Hello everyone,
Recently we've changed the URL structure on our website, and of course we had to 301 redirect the old urls to the coresponding new ones.
The way the technical guys did this is:
"http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "/new-url.html"
meaning as a relative redirect path, not an absolute one like this:
"http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "http://www.domain.com/new-url.html"This happened for few thousands urls, and the fact is the organic traffic dropped for those pages after this change. (no other changes were made on these pages and the new urls are as seo friendly as possible, A grade on On-Page Grader).
The question is: does the relative redirect negatively affects seo, or it counts the same as an absolute path redirect?
Thanks,
S. -
Thanks Ari!
-
Hi Silviu
It is as Ari said - source URL is relative and destination URL is absolute.
Peter
-
the destination URL should 100% be absolute!
-
Thank you for the tip Ari, but our website is not using apache and htaccess, so the rules are written in another language, but I'm sure this is not important.
The http status of the old urls is 301 to the new relative paths /new-url.html
and this is where my problem is:
Should the destination url (the new one) be relative or absolute?Silviu
-
301 Redirects should always be programmed and thought of us relative to full path.
in htaccess, it should look like this:
redirect 301 /old-page-name.html http://www.full-website-name.com/new-page-name.html
redirect 301 /old-page-name2.html http://www.full-website-name.com/new-page-name2.htmland so on and so forth..
Which pages lost traffic - old ones or new ones? If you could send an example (or email it if you're willing) id be happy to take a peak.
-
Hi Silviu
There is always the possibility of some SEO value being lost when you implement a 301 redirection so that may be why you have seen a hit.
Have a look at Moz's information on this here...
Note this paragraph: A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice (ranking power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.
One thing though, I have never seen relative redirection for the same domain written as "http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "/new-url.html" but always as "/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "http://www.domain.com//new-url.html". I'm not saying the other way wouldn't work - which if the links are working correctly when you follow them they clearly are - but just not seen that.
I hope the above helps,
Peter
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 301 redirect the only way when using Vanity URLs?
We have been using vanity urls for some of our pages. Mostly the pages that have a vanity URL have a long URL length. But now the problem is, the vanity URL is getting displayed on the search engine when the particular keyword related to the page is entered. I checked the google search console, the vanity URL is indexed and the original URL remains unindexed. What should I do? Is adding 301 redirect to the vanity URLs are solution? Since some of vanity URLs are not redirecting to the original. Some of the original pages are not getting traffic. Also, can using canonical tag help?
Technical SEO | | tejasbansode0 -
How do you fix redirect chains and temporary redirects?
Hi, I have a lot of issues popping up with temporary redirects and redirect chains. I'm still confused as to what exactly redirect chains are and I don't know how to find where the "chains" are or how to fix them. I'm having two issues mainly:1. Temporary RedirectsI have around 100 pages on our www.twowayradiosfor.com website that are being flagged as temporary redirects. All of them have one thing in common: they are review pages (basically, when a customer clicks on the Review button to review a certain product, they are redirected to a review page for that product).URL Example: https://www.twowayradiosfor.com/reviewhelpful.asp?ProductCode=CLS1410-COMBO&ID=44&yes=noI went into our website and set any URL containing the following as noindex:/review.aspWill that fix the issue? If yes, will I also need to do that for any URL containing /reviewhelpful.asp?2. Redirect ChainsIt seems like basically every product page on my website has this issue (over 100 pages). Here's an example of one:https://www.twowayradiosfor.com/Motorola-CLS1110-p/cls1110.htmI don't see any broken links on this page or links that redirect to another page that redirects, etc. What is causing this? Is it something on my header bar that is redirecting (since that header bar appears on every page, maybe that is why this issue shows up on a lot of pages)?I am new to Moz and still trying to figure this stuff out. I really appreciate any help. Thanks, Sawyer
Technical SEO | | AllChargedUp0 -
301 Redirect for multiple links
I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old
Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New
domain.com/urban
domain.com/urban/tempe
domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale0 -
301 redirect adding trailing slash to url
I am looking into a .htacess file for a site I look after and have noticed that the urls are all 301 redirecting from a none slash directory to a trailing slashed directory/folders. e.g. www.domain.com/folder gets 301 redirected to www.domain.com/folder/ Will this do much harm and reduce the effect on the page and any links pointing to the site be lessened? Secondly I am not sure what part of my htaccess is causing the redirect. RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.co.uk [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
Technical SEO | | TimHolmes
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.domain.co.uk/$1 [L,R,NE] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php
RewriteRule ^(.)index.php$ /$1 [R=301,L] or could a wordpress ifmodule be causing the problem? Any info would be apreciated.0 -
301 redirect from Blogger
Hello, I have a client with a Wordpress network of blogs, each blog is owned by a different blogger. Many of them were migrated time ago from Blogger. I have seen that the way used to redirect them is a meta refresh, so no authority is being passed. I cannot find any reliable way of making a 301 from Blogger, There are some plugins, but I'm afraid of using them. Any of you have experience with this situation please? I have even thought about placing a global rel canonical before the meta refresh, but I think that here the problem is the meta refresh itself.... Thank you in advance
Technical SEO | | Juandbbam0 -
A script to automatically write 301 redirect rules to htaccess?
I was wondering if anyone could help provide some resources on how to automatically write 301 redirect rules to htaccess. Allow me to explain... I'm building a new website and the primary users are businesses. They have their own profile pages on the site. The URL is based off of their Company Name. In the event that they decided to change their name... reasons being, perhaps they mispelled it the first time, or they're removing LLC or adding Inc, I want to also change the URL and redirect the old URL to the new URL. Since the URL is based off of their Company Name, making a change to the company name would make a change to the URL. I know it doesn't have to work this way, but for our purpose this works best. In case the old URL had any links to it, I wanted to see if there was an way to automatically update an htaccess file with a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. Could anyone point me in the right direction of how to do this? Perhaps a sample script. I've done a lot of searches on Google and can't seem to find anything. e.g. Original:
Technical SEO | | bimmer540
Name: XYZ Widgets
URL: website.com/xyz-widgets New - business changes their company name in their profile:
Name: XYZ Widgets, Inc.
URL: website.com/xyz-widgets-inc Upon the user saving the changes in their profile, I'd like to write a 301 redirect to an htaccess file:
Redirect 301 /xyz-widgets http://www.website.com/xyz-widgets-inc I know how to manually write redirects and I've got a pretty smart web developer. We've just never triggered a script to automatically write to an htaccess file before. Is this possible? Any resources are appreciated. Any security risks? Thanks!0 -
Does it really matter to maintain 301 redirect after de-indexing of old URLs?
Today, I was reading latest blog post on SEOmoz blog about. Uncrawled 301s - A Quick Fix for When Relaunches Go Too Well This is very interesting study about 301 & How it useful to maintain traffic. I'm working on eCommerce website and I have done similar stuff on my website. I have big confusion to manage 301 redirect. My website generates new URLs due to following actions. Re-write dynamic URLs. Re-launch entire website on different eCommerce platform. [osCommerce to Magento Commerce] Re-name category. Trasfer one product from one category to another category. I'm managing my 301 redirect with old practice. Excel sheet data from Google webmaster tools and set specific new URLs for redirect. Hoooo... Now, I have 8.5K redirect in htaccess... And, I'm thinking it's too much. Can we remove old 301 redirect from htaccess or not? This is big question for me. Because, all pages are not hyperlink on external website. Google have just de-indexed old URLs and indexed new URLs. So, Is it require to maintain 301 redirect after Google process?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Why is a 301 redirected url still getting indexed?
We recently fixed a redirect issue in a website, and although it appears that the redirection is working fine, the url in question keeps on getting crawled, indexed and cached by google. The redirect was done a month ago, and google shows cached version of it, even for a couple of days ago. Manual checking shows that its being redirected, and also a couple of online tools i checked report a 301 redirect. Do you have any idea why this could be happening? The website I'm talking about is www.hotelmajestic.gr and its being redirected to www.hotel-majestic.gr
Technical SEO | | dim_d0