Multiple 301 redirects and old site content appearing in Google results
-
I have found that for some Google searches the old version of the site on a completely different domain is appearing on page one of the results, while the newer site is only on page 3.
The old site is redirecting to the new site with a 301 redirect, however there is also an additional redirect on the new site to force SSL.
Despite this when you view the Google cache of the result that appears in Google the content of the page is still the old site. Is this normal or is Google not following the chain of 301 redirects?
Edit: I just found out that downloading the page by right clicking a link and clicking download rather than viewing it in a browser leads to the old site appearing and the 301 redirect not being followed.
-
Thank you Amelia
-
With 4 that is possible, but before you kill everything off, do give my suggestion a whirl to see if that has an impact. However, that also depends on how much of a rush you are in to see a resolution - it could take a little time until Google gets around to resolving it.
Feel free to PM me if you would like me to take a peek at anything.
-Andy
-
I see Andy has also suggested removing via webmaster tools. And he was smart enough to remember fetch as google too! Andy, you rock!
-
Why redirect twice? I'd redirect to the https version from the old site/pages instead of going through two loops...
Also, did you do the change of address thing in webmaster tools? You can also remove urls from the index through webmaster tools, but I've only ever done this once when our IT guy f-ed up our dns settings so can't really help you much though it was pretty straight-forward if I remember rightly.
Good luck
-
Thanks Andy - I know it's difficult without the sites so I appreciate your efforts! We've checked the 301s and are pretty sure they're implemented OK. I suspect that we just have too many of them. 2 or 3 redirects in a chain seems to be OK according to Matt Cutts but we've got 4 and I reckon Google is ignoring them altogether and just indexing the original content.
-
No problem.
What I was going to look for was the chain of 301 and make sure there were no errors in how these were implemented.
You could also use Webmaster Tools to suggest removal of old pages, then use Fetch as Google, to help speed up the spidering process.
It's a little awkward without seeing the sites I'm afraid.
-Andy
-
Unfortunately I can't post links since we're under a confidentiality agreement with the customer that limits what we can do. Sorry! I know it would be a lot better with URLs but we just can't do it...
-
Do you have example links from both sites that I could take a look at please Michael?
-Andy
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
-
Google Not Indexing App Content
Hello Mozzers I recently noticed that there has been an increase in crawl errors reported in Google Search console & Google has stopped indexing our app content. Could this be due to the fact that there is a mismatch between the host path name mentioned within the android deeplink (within the alternate tag) and the actual URL of the page. For instance on the following desktop page http://www.example.com.au/page-1 the android deeplink points to http://www.example.com.au/android-app://com.example/http/www.example.com.au/4652374 Please note that the content on both pages (desktop & android) is same.Is this is a correct setup or am I doing something wrong here? Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you so much in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | InMarketingWeTrust0 -
Manual action penalty revoked, rankings still low, if we create a new site can we use the old content?
Scenario:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd
A website that we manage was hit with a manual action penalty for unnatural incoming links (site-wide). The penalty was revoked in early March and we're still not seeing any of our main keywords rank high in Google (we are found on page 10 and beyond). Our traffic metrics from March 2014 (after the penalty was revoked) - July 2014 compared to November 2013 - March 2014 was very similar. Question: Since the website was hit with a manual action penalty for unnatural links, is the content affected as well? If we were to take the current website and move it to a new domain name (without 301 redirecting the old pages), would Google see it as a brand new website? We think it would be best to use brand new content but the financial costs associated are a large factor in the decision. It would be preferred to reuse the old content but has it already been tarnished?0 -
Should I redirect images when I migrate my site
We are about to migrate a large website with a fair few images (20,000). At the moment we include images in the sitemap.xml so they are indexed by Google and drive traffic (not sure how I can find out how much though). Current image slugs are like:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia
http://website.com/assets/images/a2/65680/thumbnails/638x425-crop.jpg?1402460458 Like on the old site, images on the new website will also have unreadable cache slugs, like:
http://website.com/site_media/media/cache/ce/7a/ce7aeffb1e5bdfc8d4288885c52de8e3.jpg All content pages on the new site will have the same slugs as on the old site. Should I go through the trouble of redirecting all these images?0 -
Multiple Google Webmaster Tools Configurations
Hello everyone, I just inherited a website and 2 different users created GWT accounts on the same site and have configured different settings. Do you know how Google behaves when this happens? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Redirect multiple domains to a primary domain
Hello that such I make the following query imagine we have three domains on the same thematic or category primary domain: domain-antiguo1.com (3 years) (200 Backlink), domain-antiguo2.net (10 years) (1000 Backlinks) and domain-antiguo3.com (6 years) (500 Backlinks) and decide to redirect all these domains favorite one: domain-principal.com The three domains registered refeccionar this google webmaster, has its respective income sitemap and google webmaster area change of address to the main domain the three domains are my property It would have a penalty for doing this practice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globotec0 -
How to do a site migration followed by a domain migration and avoid 301 redirect chains?
Hi all, The current roadmap for our Eng team has us performing a site migration (redirecting one subfolder to another subfolder) and then a domain migration shortly after. The way I see it, I have 2 scenarios (the 1st involves the site migration THEN the domain migration and the 2nd is the site migration and domain migration being done simultaneously): olddomain.com/subfolder-old to olddomain.com/subfolder-new THEN olddomain.com/subfolder-new to newdomain.com/subfolder-new AND olddomain.com/subfolder-old to newdomain.com/subfolder-new olddomain.com/subfolder-old to newdomain.com/subfolder-new I also understand that there are two best practices for a domain migration and they are 1) keep everything the same that you can to help Google understand it is the same page, just on a different domain and 2) avoid chain redirects. As you can imagine, scenario 1 requires more Eng costs than scenario 2. So, my question is, is scenario 2 a perfectly viable option or should I make the push to go for scenario 1? Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brad-causes1 -
Google Site Extended Listing Not Indexed
I am trying to get the new Site map to be picked up by Google for the extended listing as its pulling from the old links and returning 404 errors. How can I get the site listing indexed quickly and have the extended listing get updated to point to the right places. This is the site - http://epaperflip.com/Default.aspx This is the search with the extended listing and some 404's - Broad Match search for "epaperflip"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Intergen0 -
Google Places not appearing
is it possible to be sandboxed for a google places page? one of our clinics has a places page, and it was doing fine (http://www.google.com/maps/place?cid=5542269234389030356) but now whenever we set our location to trinity,fl and try to search for weight loss, weight loss trinity, etc.. it doesnt come up. it only comes up if we search medi weight loss trinity. also, when we go into our google places dashboard and try to edit the pictures, it doesnt show the same pictures on the actual locations page. for example, in our dashboard we have 5 pictures, but on the actual places page, 3 pictures are showing (none of which are in our dashboard). any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AustinBarton0