How to handle a server outage if I have two sites
-
I operate a web application. It consists of two sites, www.mysite.com and app.mysite.com. As you might imagine, www is used for marketing purposes, and it's our main organic search entry point. The app.mysite.com domain is where our application portal is for customers, and it is also where our login and registration pages are located.
Currently, www.mysite.com is experiencing a catastrophic outage and is returning 504 errors, but app.mysite.com is on a totally separate system with a lot redundancy, and is doing just fine.
If we get traffic from referrals or search, we want that traffic to be able to login and register, so we've replaced the 504 error with a 302 redirect to app.mysite.com until the situation is resolved. This provides the best possible experience for users (nothing's worse than a 504). How will this affect SEO? Is there something other than a 302 that I should be doing with the broken www.mysite.com domain?
-
I would also use a 302.
As long as it doesn't last too long, you should be OK.
If you think it may last longer, you could change your DNS to point to the other location, but you should drop your TTL on DNS so it is a fast changeover to move it back.
This kind of thing is best set up and tested when there are no problems, on another domain, and then test it for real sometime when you have worked out exactly what to do.
-
Depending on the longevity of the outage, I would say no, that you're using 302 appropriately. In fact I'm trying to think what else you could do that's better, and really can't come up with much (url rewrite so the end user isn't confused by app.mysite.com versus www? and that's reaching). If the outage is short term (e.g. less then 24-48 hours) I really can't think of a better solution than 302. Google dislikes it when you flip 301s off and on at the drop of a hat obviously.
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
-
Indexed Pages Different when I perform a "site:Google.com" site search - why?
My client has an ecommerce website with approx. 300,000 URLs (a lot of these are parameters blocked by the spiders thru meta robots tag). There are 9,000 "true" URLs being submitted to Google Search Console, Google says they are indexing 8,000 of them. Here's the weird part - When I do a "site:website" function search in Google, it says Google is indexing 2.2 million pages on the URL, but I am unable to view past page 14 of the SERPs. It just stops showing results and I don't even get a "the next results are duplicate results" message." What is happening? Why does Google say they are indexing 2.2 million URLs, but then won't show me more than 140 pages they are indexing? Thank you so much for your help, I tried looking for the answer and I know this is the best place to ask!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
Two blogs on a single domain?
Hi guys, Does anyone have any experience of having (trying to rank) two separate blogs existing on one domain, for instance: www.companysite.com/service1/blogwww.companysite.com/service2/blogThese 2 pages (service 1 and service 2) offer completely different services (rank for different keywords).(for example, a company that provides 2 separate services: SEO service and IT service)Do you think it is a good/bad/confusing search engine practice trying to have separate blogs for each service or do you think there should be only one blog that contains content for both services?Bearing in mind that there is an already existing subdomain for a non-profit part of business that ranks for different keywords: non-profit.companysite.comand it will potentially have another blog so the URL would look like: non-profit.companysite.com/blogAny ideas would be appreciated!Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kellys.marketing0 -
3 Wordpress sites 1 Tumblr site coming under 1domain(4subdomains) WPMU: Proper Redirect?
Hey Guys, witnessSF.org (WP), witnessLA.org(Tumblr), witnessTO.com(WP), witnessHK.com(WP), and witnessSEOUL.com(new site no redirects needed) are being moved over to sf.ourwitness.com, la.ourwitness.com and so forth. All under on large Wordpress MU instance. Some have hundreds of articles/links others a bit less. What is the best method to take, I understand there are easy redirects, and the complete fully manual one link at a time approach. Even the WP to WP the permalinks are changing from domain.com/date/post-name to domain.com/post-name? Here are some options: Just redirect all previous witinessla.org/* to la.ourwitness.org/ (automatic direct all pages to home page deal) (easiest not the best)2) Download Google Analytics top redirected domains about 50 urls have significant ranking and traffic (in LA's sample) and just redirect those to custom links. (most bang for the buck for the articles that rank manually set up to the correct place) 3) Best of the both worlds may be possible? Automated perhaps?I prefer working with .htaccess vs a redirect plugin for speed issues. Please advise. Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vmialik0 -
How should I handle pagination on an e-commerce site?
I am looking at one of our category pages and it has 25 additional pages for a total of 26 pages. The url for the first page looks good, then the next one ends with ?SearchText=768&SearchType=Category All additional pages have the same url. My first concern was duplicate content, but after looking no pages after the 1st are even indexed. What is the best way to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Baffled why my site is not improving in rankings.
Site shows up in the Map results when ever Google shows them. But for all other organic terms site ranks way back. Have lots of unique content and one page grade of an A. The site is http://alexpadillabailbonds.com The main page is optimized for "sacramento bail bonds" with a Moz grade of A yet its not included in the search results. It was before. Any insight from any one will greatly help. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andreyzolnikov0 -
Site revamp for neglected site - modifying site structure, URLs and content - is there an optimal approach?
A site I'm involved with, www.organicguide.com, was at one stage (long ago) performing reasonably well in the search engines. It was ranking highly for several keywords. The site has been neglected for some considerable period of time. A new group of people are interested in revamping the site, updating content, removing some of the existing content, and generally refreshing the site entirely. In order to go forward with the site, significant changes need to be made. This will likely involve moving the entire site across to wordpress. The directory software (edirectory.com) currently being used has not been designed with SEO in mind and as a result numerous similar pages of directory listings (all with similar titles and descriptions) are in google's results, albeit with very weak PA. After reading many of the articles/blog posts here I realize that a significant revamp and some serious SEO work is needed. So, I've joined this community to learn from those more experienced. Apart from doing 301 redirects for pages that we need to retain, is there any optimal way of removing/repairing the current URL structure as the site gets updated? Also, is it better to make changes all at once or is an iterative approach preferred? Many thanks in advance for any responses/advice offered. Cheers MacRobbo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | macrobbo0 -
In mobile searches, does Google recognize HTML5 sites as mobile sites?
Does Google recognize HTML5 sites using responsive design as mobile sites? I know that for mobile searches, Google promotes results on mobile sites. I'm trying to determine if my site, created in HTML5 with responsive design falls into that category. Any insights on the topic would be very helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0 -
Reliable outsource site
Hi which is the most quality site to outsource my backlinks? freelancer.com odesk.com any other? From elance I am very disappointed. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0