Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Htaccess Redirect with %C2%A0 in URL

    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.

    Htaccess Redirect with %C2%A0 in URL

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    7
    11361
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • pepsimoz
      pepsimoz last edited by

      Below is my setup for redirects in .htaccess file in my root word press installation.

      • The www to non-www works well, so no problems there
      • Other page redirects work well, too (example: redirect 301 /some-page/ http://mysite.com/another-page/ (I didn't post those because I have a few too many : )

      So here it goes...

      RewriteEngine On
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mysite.com$ [NC]
      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

      BEGIN WordPress

      <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
      RewriteBase /
      RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
      RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule>

      END WordPress

      redirect 301 /archives/10-college- majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/

      redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%20majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/

      redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/

      I'm having a problem with the last 301 redirect:

      • redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/

      not working... As you can see I've tried using other varations of the "space" but no go. I also used a redirect in cPanel's Redirect screen; testing all the possible options + wildcard

      I've also tried this:

      • http://serverfault.com/questions/201829/using-special-characters-in-apache-mod-rewrite-rule (perhaps unsuccessfully, because it caused a 500 server error and it's a different situation in my case)

      I also saw something here:

      • http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3908682.htm

      but I don't know if it works and how I would implement that + do so without compromising ALL other redirects.

      Note: the URL displays with a space in the address bar of all major web browsers: http://mysite.com/10-college- majors/  and goes to a 404 page

      I have a goregous page / PR6 / high authority site linking to the URL on my site, but they copied the URL with a space somehow. I contacted the person responsible for the website and he claims it works fine (aka he didn't check it).

      Is there a clean way to redirect ONLY this problematic URL without compromising other redirects, etc?

      Any ideas would be great. I'll respond with progress. Thanks in advance.

      UPDATE
      the   redirect works, and it did work. Even so, when looking at source of page linking to mine, the URL looks like this: ```
      http://mysite.com/archives/10-college- majors/
      
      Clicking the URL in Source View in FireFox takes me to ```
      http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/
      
      none of my 301 redirects should direct there. I don't have any redirect plugins either.
      
      
      
      
      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • KeriMorgret
        KeriMorgret @pepsimoz last edited by

        I had problems getting redirects for URLs with spaces in them working correctly on my own site, and ended up using the Redirection plugin as well, and it's worked like a charm.

        The other thing I like about this plugin is the ability to see 404 errors and to set up redirects straight from that 404 list. If someone has linked to you and accidentally did a typo in the URL somewhere, or a comma got included in the hyperlink, you can see it in the 404 list and fix it right there.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • pepsimoz
          pepsimoz @DanDeceuster last edited by

          I ended up doing what you recommended. I downloaded the Redirection plugin.

          I copied the URL with %C2%A0 in it and setup a target URL without the space and the results were great. I double checked all my other redirects, in case of conflict - no worries there. Also I used the server header checker tool and saw a great 301 returning a 200 OK. That felt good.

          I still wanted to learn how to do it vs. how to "plug it" - see my thread here for all other woes related to this URL

          In the meanwhile I found out that it wasn't several great sites that were linking wrongly, it's like close to ten (some .edu, .org, and even one .mil - editorial links).

          Sometimes it's better to conform than to be a "purist". I saved tons of time by doing what I contemplated doing initially. Thanks for the push and for the help, Dan.

          KeriMorgret 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • pepsimoz
            pepsimoz @DanDeceuster last edited by

            That is an idea I have contemplated, but I'm trying to limit the number of plugins. I have other redirects working very well, but this one with the "space" is so pesky. I would love to solve the issue using .htaccess if possible. I am looking into other solutions and will post here when anything comes up. In the meanwhile, I hope others may help, too.

            Dan, thank you for your great feedback.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • DanDeceuster
              DanDeceuster last edited by

              Instead of using the htaccess file, you should download a wordpress plugin called SImple 301 Redirects. It's very easy. Maybe if you do the 301 reidrects at the wordpress plugin level then wordpress can handle them better.

              pepsimoz 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • pepsimoz
                pepsimoz @DanDeceuster last edited by

                Dan,
                
                Thanks for your response. I tried your recommendations. None worked.
                
                http://mysite.com/archives/10-college- majors/ is what I found in the source code, but my AWSTATS and Google Webmaster Tools point to a URL %C2%A0 as the culprit 404 error. I double checked if the URL registering in my Stats and Google WT is from that PR6 page - yes it is.
                
                There's no space in the URL from source code and I did a 301 redirect with this variation (see original post)
                
                The url only shows the space in the browser's address bar, but not in source.
                
                UPDATE
                the   redirect works, and it did work. Even so, when looking at source of page linking to mine, the URL looks like this: ```
                http://mysite.com/archives/10-college- majors/
                
                Clicking the URL in Source View in FireFox takes me to ```
                http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/
                
                none of my 301 redirects should direct there. I don't have any redirect plugins either.
                
                
                
                
                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • DanDeceuster
                  DanDeceuster last edited by

                  Can't you look up the source code of the page with the link to you? In there you should find your link at

                  pepsimoz 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • 1 / 1
                  • First post
                    Last post

                  Got a burning SEO question?

                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                  Start my free trial


                  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.

                  • See all categories

                  Related Questions

                  • oceanstorm

                    301 Redirect in breadcrumb. How bad is it?

                    Hi all, How bad is it to have a link in the breadcrumb that 301 redirects? We had to create some hidden category pages in our ecommerce platform bigcommerce to create a display on our category pages in a certain format. Though whilst the category page was set to not visable in bigcommerce admin the URL still showed in the live site bread crumb. SO, we set a 301 redirect on it so it didnt produce a 404. However we have lost a lot of SEO ground the past few months.  could this be why? is it bad to have a 301 redirect in the breadrcrumb.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oceanstorm
                    0
                  • viatrading1

                    Inactive Products - Inactive URLs

                    Hi, In our website www.viatrading.com we have many products that might be in stock or not depending on availability. Until now, when a product was not available anymore, we took this page down (and redirected to its product category page). And, only if the product was available again, we re-activated the URL - this might be days, months or even years later. To make this more SEO-friendly, we decided now that while a product is not available, instead or deactivating/redirecting the page, we will leave it online and just add a message saying "This product is currently not available". If we do this, we will automatically re-activate about 500 products pages at once. 1. Just to make sure, is it harmful for SEO to keep activating/deactivating URLs this way? 2. Since most of these pages have been deindexed for a long time due to being redirected - have they lost all their SEO juice? 3. How can we better activate these old 500 pages - is it ok activating them all at once? Thank you,

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
                    1
                  • sofla_seo

                    Domain Redirect and SSL Cert

                    Hi, When redirecting an entire site to another domain, do you have to maintain the SSL certificate? The SSL expires 3 days before the planned redirect. Thanks in advance.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sofla_seo
                    0
                  • Angelos_Savvaidis

                    Multilingual Site and 301 redirection

                    Hey there awesome people of Moz I have this site that has many languages in it. The main language is English and my developer did the following www.example.com ( is the main site ) which redirects with a 301 to www.example.com/en if your geo location is supported by our languages then you will automatically be redirected to whatever language you have in your country but does the first language with is english have to 301 redirect to www.example.com/en ? I thought that the right way is to just leave /en at the root file. Thanks in advance

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis
                    0
                  • shloy23-294584

                    SEO impact difference between a URL Rewrite and 301 redirect

                    Hi guys and girls! Just putting a new site live, we changed the URL from one thing to another and I created a 301 file redirecting the urls like for like. The developer installing it has created a different file with columns like: RewriteRule ^page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^/page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] What's the difference? The page redirects but is there a difference between the 301 redirect and this URL rewrite in terms of SEO and link value?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shloy23-294584
                    0
                  • tomcraig86

                    Canonical URL & sitemap URL mismatch

                    Hi We're running a Magento store which doesn't have too much stock rotation. We've implemented a plugin that will allow us to give products custom canonical URLs (basically including the category slug, which is not possible through vanilla Magento). The sitemap feature doesn't pick up on these URLs, so we're submitting URLs to Google that are available and will serve content, but actually point to a longer URL via a canonical meta tag. The content is available at each URL and is near identical (all apart from the breadcrumbs) All instances of the page point to the same canonical URL We are using the longer URL in our internal architecture/link building to show this preference My questions are; Will this harm our visibility? Aside from editing the sitemap, are there any other signals we could give Google? Thanks

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig86
                    0
                  • trung.ngo

                    Remove URLs that 301 Redirect from Google's Index

                    I'm working with a client who has 301 redirected thousands of URLs from their primary subdomain to a new subdomain (these are unimportant pages with regards to link equity). These URLs are still appearing in Google's results under the primary domain, rather than the new subdomain. This is problematic because it's creating an artificial index bloat issue. These URLs make up over 90% of the URLs indexed. My experience has been that URLs that have been 301 redirected are removed from the index over time and replaced by the new destination URL. But it has been several months, close to a year even, and they're still in the index. Any recommendations on how to speed up the process of removing the 301 redirected URLs from Google's index? Will Google, or any search engine for that matter, process a noindex meta tag if the URL's been redirected?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trung.ngo
                    0
                  • 379seo

                    Canonical URLs and Sitemaps

                    We are using canonical link tags for product pages in a scenario where the URLs on the site contain category names, and the canonical URL points to a URL which does not contain the category names.  So, the product page on the site is like www.example.com/clothes/skirts/skater-skirt-12345, and also like www.example.com/sale/clearance/skater-skirt-12345 in another category.  And on both of these pages, the canonical link tag references a 3rd URL like www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345.  This 3rd URL, used in the canonical link tag is a valid page, and displays the same content as the other two versions, but there are no actual links to this generic version anywhere on the site (nor external). Questions: 1. Does the generic URL referenced in the canonical link also need to be included as on-page links somewhere in the crawled navigation of the site, or is it okay to be just a valid URL not linked anywhere except for the canonical tags? 2. In our sitemap, is it okay to reference the non-canonical URLs, or does the sitemap have to reference only the canonical URL?  In our case, the sitemap points to yet a 3rd variation of the URL, like www.example.com/product.jsp?productID=12345.  This page retrieves the same content as the others, and includes a canonical link tag back to www.example.com/skater-skirt-12345.  Is this a valid approach, or should we revise the sitemap to point to either the category-specific links or the canonical links?

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 379seo
                    0

                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                  Start my free trial
                  Products
                  • Moz Pro
                  • Moz Local
                  • Moz API
                  • Moz Data
                  • STAT
                  • Product Updates
                  Moz Solutions
                  • SMB Solutions
                  • Agency Solutions
                  • Enterprise Solutions
                  • Digital Marketers
                  Free SEO Tools
                  • Domain Authority Checker
                  • Link Explorer
                  • Keyword Explorer
                  • Competitive Research
                  • Brand Authority Checker
                  • Local Citation Checker
                  • MozBar Extension
                  • MozCast
                  Resources
                  • Blog
                  • SEO Learning Center
                  • Help Hub
                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                  • How-to Guides
                  • Moz Academy
                  • API Docs
                  About Moz
                  • About
                  • Team
                  • Careers
                  • Contact
                  Why Moz
                  • Case Studies
                  • Testimonials
                  Get Involved
                  • Become an Affiliate
                  • MozCon
                  • Webinars
                  • Practical Marketer Series
                  • MozPod
                  Connect with us

                  Contact the Help team

                  Join our newsletter
                  Moz logo
                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                  • Accessibility
                  • Terms of Use
                  • Privacy

                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.