301 Redirect using rewrite rule in .htaccess
-
Hi guys,
I have these types of URLs with the format below that are seen as duplicate contents
http://www.mysite.com/index.php?a=11&b=15&d=3&c=1
I wanted to permanently redirect them to my homepage. I am thinking if this is possible in .htaccess using rewrite conditions?
Thanks in advance...
-
This is a solutions, but its an ugly one, does anyone really wants a home url of http://www.mysite.com/index.php?a=11&b=16&c=5&d=1&page=2. you then have the problem of people linking to that page.
I believe michael said in a previous post that they were prodused by his CMS, the best idea would be to get rid of them rather then deal wioth them if posible.
-
From memory, I believe Michael has these urls produced by his CMS and are unnecessary, i could be getting him mixed up with someone else.
also doing this in Google does not help other search engines, you would need to do it in all search engines for all possible combinations for each pages, this can become un-manageable. -
I have to say I agree with Sha on this one.
If you are not confident in using .htaccess then I wouldn't bother. I think there is a much easier solution:
1- As Sha said, use webmaster tools to tell Google how to handle these parameters, this should slowly start to take them out of the index.
2- Add rel=canonical to all your pages, this way even if parameters are added, the rel=canonical will always point back to the original and remove any risk of duplicate content.
I hope this helps.
Craig
-
Hi Michael,
You do not need to make any changes to your .htaccess file. Actually, if you 301 these URLs you will break your search so that it no longer works.
The solution I would use is to go into Google Webmaster Tools and tell Googlebot to ignore the parameters you are concerned about.
In your code, the ? says "here come some parameters" and the & separates those parameters. So, in the case you have quoted, the parameters are a, b, c, d.
Be aware of course, that Roger will still see these URLs as duplicates since he doesn't know about your private conversations with Google This means that they will still appear in your SEOmoz report, but as long as you make a note of them so you know they can be ignored that shouldn't be a problem.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
I disagree more with the level of apprehension, rather than the premise itself. Anyhow I’m off to bed.
-
Alan, we will just have to disagree on this topic.
I too have studied Computer Science in college. I too have a wall filled with MS certifications. I too have been programming since before the internet and even before hard drives existed. I am only 40 but the first PC I used was an Atari 800 and the command to save my work was "csave" which stood for "cassette save". This was before even floppy disks were popular and data was saved to cassette tapes.
I certainly am not forbidding anyone from taking whatever action they deem fit. It is indeed up to Michael or any reader to assess what changes they are comfortable making for their site.
The point I am making is many people grow very comfortable in making changes to their website, especially SEO-related changes. It is relatively safe to do such. If you make a mistake, your site may not rank as well, may not load as fast, may not appear correctly in all browsers and so forth. The consequences are relatively low.
Making changes in an htaccess file is a completely different ballgame. One character out of place and your site can instantly be taken off line. If that happened, it's actually not so bad compared to other problems which can be created. A character out of place can disable your site security and the person making the change would likely not realize the problem until their site was hacked. A character out of place can cause other functionality of your site to not work correctly. It can also cause the fix being implemented to work in some but not all instances.
I highly encourage users to make most changes to their sites according to their comfort level. Htaccess modifications is a clear exception. A user can easily be mislead to believe their site is working fine only to later realize there is a major problem with the site. There are countless instances where a site was exploited due to a vulnerability in the htaccess file. I therefore strongly recommend for users never to touch their htaccess file unless they are extremely confident in the changes they are making. Many websites will offer code snippets which can provide users a false sense of security and lead them to experiment. It is a bad idea to do such with the htaccess file.
-
I have
been programming since before the internet came to be, I have studied Computer
Science at University and passed numerous Microsoft Certifications, and while I
would not discount study, it is my experience that I have never met a great
programmer that did not learn by trail and error, after all this is how you
become experienced. There is no danger in using a backup, RegEx does not work
sometimes and not others, it is not dynamic, it is a static peace of code. You
will not excel at SEO unless you learn these things. I am sure Michael is capable
of deciding if he wants to do it himself, he seems to have got a long way already.
It would seem to me he is learning quite quickly. You may suggest that you
would not try, but I don’t think it is correct to forbid others. -
I'm sorry but the idea of advising users without expertise to modify their htaccess file is completely reckless. The trial & error approach can easily lead to circumstances where the rule works some of the time but not always. Worse, it can negatively impact other rules and site security causing major problems.
Without knowing the details of the site involved, I tend to make the safe assumption the site is important and there are one or more people who's livelihoods depend on the site. Having worked with clients who have recovered from the damage caused by errors in htaccess files I will firmly share my experience that no one other then a qualified expert should ever touch the file. The potential for damage is very high.
-
All he needs to do is keep a back up, and he can have as many tries as he wants. He simpley has to replace the file with his back up if he goes wrong.
There is little danger here. -
htaccess rewrite rules are based on Regex expressions. Your current Regex rewrite rules can be modified to adjust for the specific URLs. You need to locate an experienced programmer to write the expressions for you.
-
Hi Mchael.
Yes, you can use htaccess to rewrite or redirect the URL.
Where do these URLs presently lead to? If these URLs are duplicates for pages on your site, I would suggest using a 301 redirect to send the traffic to the proper URL rather then your home page.
If your server uses cPanel, there is a Redirect tool you can use. This tool makes the process of adding a redirect easier and safer then modifying your htaccess file. Your htaccess file controls various aspects of your site's security, accessibility and SEO. The slightest error can cause your site to instantly be inaccessible. I would not recommend making any changes to your htaccess file except by an experienced programmer. Even using the correct code in the wrong order can lead to problems.
-
I work on microsoft servers, i dont use .htaccess
but this is the rule i woudl write to fix all urls stating with index.php, no mater what the querystreing
<rule name="DefaultRule" stopprocessing="true"><match url="^index.php"><action type="Redirect" url="/" appendquerystring="false"></action></match></rule>
but try this let me know if it works i have a few other ideas
RewriteRule ^/index.php / [R=301,L]
-
Hi Alan,
I think it's now clear to me that they should be rewritten. Thanks for pointing me to the right direction.
I have a classified site and in my .htaccess I have these rewrite rules by default
RewriteRule ^/?(new)/(1_day)/([0-9]+)/([^./\"'?#]+).html$ index.php?a=11&b=$3&c=65&d=4 [L] ##category newest 1day
RewriteRule ^/?(new)/(1_week)/([0-9]+)/([^./\"'?#]+).html$ index.php?a=11&b=$3&c=65&d=1 [L] ##category newest 1week
RewriteRule ^/?(new)/(2_weeks)/([0-9]+)/([^./\"'?#]+).html$ index.php?a=11&b=$3&c=65&d=2 [L] ##category newest 2weeks
RewriteRule ^/?(new)/(3_weeks)/([0-9]+)/([^./\"'?#]+).html$ index.php?a=11&b=$3&c=65&d=3 [L] ##category newest 3weeksRewriteRule ^/?(new)/(1_day)/([0-9]+)/([^./\"'?#]+)/([0-9]+).html$ index.php?a=11&b=$3&c=65&d=4&page=$5 [L] ##category newest 1day pages
RewriteRule ^/?(new)/(1_week)/([0-9]+)/([^./\"'?#]+)/([0-9]+).html$ index.php?a=11&b=$3&c=65&d=1&page=$5 [L] ##category newest 1week pages
RewriteRule ^/?(new)/(2_weeks)/([0-9]+)/([^./\"'?#]+)/([0-9]+).html$ index.php?a=11&b=$3&c=65&d=2&page=$5 [L] ##category newest 2weeks pages
RewriteRule ^/?(new)/(3_weeks)/([0-9]+)/([^./\"'?#]+)/([0-9]+).html$ index.php?a=11&b=$3&c=65&d=3&page=$5 [L] ##category newest 3weeks pagesunfortunately, these rules could not handle all URLs of the same format with different variables like the following below
http://www.mysite.com/index.php?a=11&b=15&d=3&c=1
http://www.mysite.com/index.php?a=11&b=15&d=3&c=2
http://www.mysite.com/index.php?a=11&b=16&c=5&d=1
http://www.mysite.com/index.php?a=11&b=16&c=5&d=1&page=2
http://www.mysite.com/index.php?a=11&c=5&d=1&b=230
Any idea on how I can solve this problem to avoid duplicate content?
Thanks in advance...
-
rewrite and redirect are not the same thing. you want to 301 them, but better still why do you have them?
Do you have a wordpress site?If these errores were found by a crawler it means that you have the links on your site somewhere. the best thing to do is correct the links. 301's leak link juice you want to limit their number.
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
-
If I 301 redirect a sub-page that is #1, will I risk losing SERP?
I have a site that for some reason Google decided to rank one of our articles #1 for a fairly competitive term. The article is kind of a BS blog post and I want to 301 it to our page about the topic as that's designed for conversion. If I do this, will we risk losing the ranking? If so, what are other options? Can I change the content of the ranked page to something closer to our landing page? Any advice is welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dk80 -
Pages that 301 redirect to a 404
We are going through a website redesign that involves changing URL's for the pages on our site. Currently all our pages are in the format domain.com/example.html and we are moving to stip off the .html file extension so it would just be domain.com/example We have thousands of pages as the site deals with news so building a redirect for each individual page isn't really feasible. My plan is to have a generic rewrite rule that redirects any page that ends .html to the stripped off version of this. A problem I can see with this is that it will also redirect pages that don't exist. So for example, domain.com/non-existant-page.html would 301 to domain.com/non-existant-page which would then return a 404 status. What would the SEO repercussions be for this? Obviously if a page doesn't exist already then it shouldn't show up in the search engine indexes and shouldn't be a problem but I'm a bit worried about how old pages that currently legitimately 404 will be treated when they start to 301 redirect to a 404 instead. Not sure if there any other potential issues from this that I've missed either? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbb0240 -
301 Redirecting Multiple Domains
I have several complete websites with blogs setup for different geo locations and was considering forwarding them all to one domain directly would greatly benefit ranking. The blogs are all linked together and that is where most of the links come from. Would I benefit in 301 Redirecting the domains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WindshieldGuy-2762210 -
Primary Domain or Redirect?
We are starting a new travel guide for a resort town. I have bought an expired domain with decent related links and PR (which seems to have survived the transfer (4 months ago). Beofre we launch the new site I am trying to decide if we should use this expired domain as the primary URL for the new site or just do a permanent redirect and buy a new domain that better matches the theme of the site. I am obviously concerned with starting from scatch with a new domain. I am confident we can build some good rellevant links in a short time but this space is very competetive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Locals0 -
Using Reg Ex to 301 old categories and query strings in Magento
Hi SEOmoz community! I'm hoping somebody with a little Magento and Reg Ex knowledge will be able to help me out here. I need to 301 some old categories along with their old query strings. Below is an example. Old URL /bed-linen/pillowcases-html.html Users can then filter by price or range which then creates a query string such as... /bed-linen/pillowcases-html.html?price=1%2C10 New URL: /bed-linen/pillowcases.html So the new query string will be /bed-linen/pillowcases.html?price=1%2C10 Does anybody know the Reg Ex to 301 this? Can this be done in Magento re-write module or by htaccess only? Thanks in advance 🙂 Anthony @Anthony_Mac85
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
Is it a problem to have too many 301 redirects within your site
my website is translated into 10+ languages, but our news articles are often only published in 1-2 languages. Currently, URLs are created in the unpublished news languages that then 301 redirect the user to main news page since the content doesnt exist in that language. Is this implementation okay or is there a preferred method we should be using so that we don't have a large number of pages on the site with redirects? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
It appears that Googlebot Mobile will look for mobile redirects from the desktop site, but still use the SEO from the desktop site.
Is the above statement correct? I've read that its better to have different SEO titles & descriptions for mobile sites as users search differently on mobile devices. I've also read it's good to link build, keep text content on mobile sites etc to get the mobile site to rank. If I choose to not have titles & descriptions on my mobile site will Google just rank our desktop version & then redirect a user on a mobile device to our mobile site or should I be adding in titles & descriptions into the mobile site? Thanks so much for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Multiple 301 redirects considered a redirection chain?
I need to redirect a ton of duplicate content, so I want to try redirect 301 /store/index.php /store redirect 301 /store/product-old /store/product-new redirect 301 /store/product-old1 /store/product-new1 redirect 301 /store/product-old2 /store/product-new2 redirect 301 /store/product-old3 /store/product-new3 redirect 301 /store/product-old4/file.html /store/product-old4/new4/file.html and then a whole bunch of old dead links to homepage. So we've had /index.php redirected to / on other parts of the site for awhile, and for the most part /store is a friendly URL, but then we have tons of dup content and work arounds that preceded my job here. I'm wondering if those redirects above would be considered a redirection chain? Since the all the redirects below the /index.php -> /store count on that one redirect. Thanks for any insight you may be able to give!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hondaspeder1