Help creating a 301 redirect in my htaccess file

[Felip3]

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to build a 301 file with the file requirements:

1. It should be visible only for Google and other Search Engine Agents.
2. It will have a few direct redirects.
3. A few URL must be dynamic redirect. For example each page the starts with olddomain.com/category and is not in the list of of direct redirects should be redirect for newdomain.com/category

Here is my start point:

#301 Starts here

Set the agents

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Googlebot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} msnbot [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Slurp

Make the direct redirect.

Redirect 301 /category/sub1 http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub1
Redirect 301 /category/sub2 http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub2

Redirect everything else

Redirect 301 /category/* http://www.newdomain.com/category

#End of my 301

Will that work how I want? is there anything wrong?

[Felip3]

Hi Thompson,

Thanks for your input, so I'm planning on eventually do the 301 for everyone. I'm re-designing  a big website and not everything is done, but I want users that are looking for the content that I already completed to land in the new site. (because the new site has a much higher conversion rate).

In other hand I have 30% of my traffic in my old site coming from direct visitors, I dont want those visitors to be send to other URL because it would be confusing. however I want people coming from google to go my new site...

Do you think I should sacrifice usability, so I don't risk Google to think I'm trying to do some kind of black hat, strategy.

[ThompsonPaul]

Setting redirects to apply only to search crawlers is pretty much their definition of cloaking, Felip3. The site could end up in a world of hurt if/when caught.

What's the reason for wanting the crawlers to be redirected differently than users? Maybe there's a better way to accomplish what you need in a way that doesn't break their terms of service.

Paul

[MickEdwards]

For the directories I think you need to go down the rewrite route.  This isn't probably functioning correctly but you get the principle.

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /category/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/category/sub1/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/category/sub2/
RewriteRule ^category/(.*) http://www.newdomain.com/category/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /category/sub1
RewriteRule ^category/sub1(.*) http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub1/$1 [L,R=301]

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^GET\ /category/sub2
RewriteRule ^category/sub2(.*) http://www.newdomain.com/category/sub2/$1 [L,R=301]