301 vs 410 for subdirectory that was moved to a new domain, 2-years later
-
Hi all,
I've read a lot about 301 vs 404 and 410s, but the case is pretty unique so I decided to get some feedback from you.
Both websites are travel related but we had one destination as a subdirectory of the other one (two neighboring countries, where more than 90% of business was related to the 'main' destination and the rest to the 'satellite'). This was obviously bad practice and we decided to move the satellite destination to its own domain. Everything was done 2 years ago and we opted for 301s to the new domain as we had some good links pointing to satellite content. (All of the moved content is destination specific and still relevant)
Few weeks back we figured out that google still shows our subdirectory when doing specific 'site:' search and looking further into it, we realized we still get traffic for satellite destination through the main website via links acquired before the move. Not a lot of hits, but they still sporadically occur. A decision was made (rather hastily) to 410 pages and see if that will make satellite subdir pages not show in google searches. So 3 weeks in, 410 errors are climbing in GWMT, but satellite subdirectory still shows in google searches. One part of the team is pushing to put back in place 301s. The other part of the team is concerned with the 'health' of the main website as those pages are not relevant for it, and want them gone .
What would you do?
-
Google is adding and removing URLs from its index fairly slowly right now, and it's not uncommon for changes to take several weeks to filter up into the index, especially for site: searches. This is very annoying (even more so for people who are trying to launch brand-new sites), but not a huge deal since, to Laura's point, these URLs are most likely not showing up for any searches, they just haven't filtered out of the index. I would give it another week or two and see what happens. You may also want to do a Fetch+Submit in Search Console for a few of the subdirectory URLs, to make sure that Google revisits them and registers that they are 410s now - if they've been redirecting for 2 years, Google may just not be crawling them that frequently.
-
Hi Laura,
Thank you for your feedback. This was a problem for the first couple of months, but we don't have the issue of the main domain showing up in SERPs anymore.
What is interesting is that although we applied 410 to these pages three weeks ago--they still show.
-
Just because Google shows the sub URL in a "site:sub.example.com'" search does not necessarily mean it shows the sub URL for natural searches. Do you have evidence that Google shows the sub page for normal searches? You may be making an issue out of something that isn't much of an issue.
I suspect you had it right the first time with the 301-redirects from main to satellite pages.
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
-
Migration to a new domain
Hi everyone, So i have one project where I'm planning to move current content on new domain, two reasons: 1. It seems current domain has some google penalty (backlink related, not manual) 2. Client wants rebranding and already has domain with new brand name. So as content is high quality and there is no content related penalty from google, what would be the best way to migrate existing content without passing any penalty AND without Google treating it as duplicate content. If i do 301 i suspect any penalty there is might follow, if i just copy existing content it won't be original content, what is the best solution here? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joelsemy0 -
Huge httaccess with old 301 redirects. Is it safe to delete all redirects with no traffic in last 2 months?
We have a huge httaccess file over several MB which seems to be the cause for slow server response time. There are lots of 301 redirects related to site migration from 9 months ago where all old URLs were redirected to new URL and also lots of 301 redirects from URL changes accumulated over the last 15 years. Is it safe to delete all 301 redirects which did not receive any traffic in last 2 months ? Or would you apply another criteria for identifying those 301 that can be safely deleted? Any way to get in google analytics or webmaster tools all 301 that received traffic in the last 2 months or any other easy way to identify those, apart from checking the apache log files ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
Domain Authority... http://www.domain.com/ vs. http://domain.com vs. http://domain.com/
Hey Guys, Looking at Page Authority for my Site and ranking them in Decending Order, I see these 3 http://www.domain.com/ | Authority 62 http://domain.com | Authority 52 http://domain.com/ | Authority 52 Since the first one listed has the highest Authority, should I be using a 301 redirects on the lower ranking variations (which I understand how works) or should I be using rel="canonical" (which I don't really understand how it works) Also, if this is a problem that I should address, should we see a significant boost if fixed? Thanks ahead of time for anyone who can help a lost sailor who doesn't know how to sail and probably shouldn't have left shore in the first place. Cheers ZP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mr_Snack0 -
Mass 301 redirect from a sub-domain - using Joomla or htaccess
How is best to mass redirect old domains - Listing the URL's in htaccess? We are looking to use Joomla as a CMS - transferring a blog from a sub-domain to the main site and want to 301 all the sub domain blog posts - any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Tips do join 2 domains
I would like to move all my old domain content ( dicasdogoogle.com.br) with more than 1200 tutorials pages to a new one (seomartin.com)... and then unify them. I´m using wordpress in both but the permalinks are different... Any tips 4 me folks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SeoMartin10 -
Sub-domain or new domain for new location
I have a small law firm in Dallas, TX. I will be moving to Austin, TX in the next 2 years. My website is doing great here in Dallas, but I have focused on keyword phrases that include the word "Dallas." I would like to leave my current website as is and maintain a Dallas office to keep the business flowing from this website. I am trying to determine the best way to get Austin business from a 2nd website. I know I will need new content that includes the use of the word "Austin". My question is: Should I put the new content on (1) a subdomain (i.e. austin.copplaw.com) or (2) a new domain (i.e. copplawfirm.com). I really want to be a player for the google local search results in both cities. I can use a different name for my law firm in Austin, if necessary. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Regards, Zac
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seozac0 -
I run an (unusual) clothing company. And I'm about to set up a version of our existing site for kids. Should I use a different domain? Or keep the current root domain?
Hello. I have a burning question which I have been trying to answer for a while. I keep getting conflicting answers and I could really do with your help. I currently run an animal fancy dress (onesie) company in the UK called Kigu through the domain www.kigu.co.uk. We're the exclusive distributor for a supplier of Japanese animal costumes and we've been selling directly through this domain for about 3 years. We rank well across most of our key words and get about 2000 hits each day. We're about to start selling a Kids range - miniature versions of the same costumes. We're planning on doing this through a different domain which is currently live - www.kigu-kids.co.uk. It' been live for about 3-4 weeks. The idea behind keeping them on separate domains is that it is a different target market and we could promote the Kids site separately without having to bring people through the adult site. We want to keep the adult site (or at least the homepage) relatively free from anything kiddy as we promote fancy dress events in nightclubs and at festivals for over 18s (don't worry, nothing kinky) and we wouldn't want to confuse that message. I've since been advised by an expert in the field that that we should set up a redirect from www.kigu-kids.co.uk and house the kids website under www.kigu.co.uk/kids as this will be better from an SEO perspective and if we don't we'll only be competing with ourselves. Are we making a big mistake by not using the same root domain for both thus getting the most of the link juice for the kids site? And if we do decide to switch to have the domain as www.kigu.co.uk/kids, is it a mistake to still promote the www.kigu-kids.co.uk (redirecting) as our domain online? Would these be wasted links? Or would we still see the benefit? Is it better to combine or is two websites better than one? Any help and advice would be much appreciated. Tom.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KIGUCREW0 -
Exact match domain or root domain for speedy SEO?
I am doing SEO for a website that has constantly rotating and only temporarily pertinent subjects on it. Let's say these information and subject cycles go for about 6 months. Assuming this would it be more effective to optimize exact match domains for each 6 month cycle or make a main domain with a few of the keywords and just target a page for each roaming subject? Advantage of the subject is I get domain authority to feed off of, advantage of the exact match is, of course exact match domains are a powerful tool to rank highly and it is only a medium competitive market, usually about 40 domain and page authority. What do you guys think? Do you have any techniques to dominate temporary and rotating markets?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarloSchneider0