301'ing googlebot
-
I have a client that has been 301’ing googlebot to the canonical page. This is because they have a cart_id and session parameters in urls. This is mainly from when googlebot comes in on a link that has these parameters in the URL, as they don’t serve these parameters up to googlebot at all once it starts to crawl the site.
I am worried about cloaking; I wanted to know if anyone has any info on this.
I know that Google have said that doing anything where you detect goolgebots useragent and treat them different is a problem.
Anybody had any experience on this, I would be glad to hear. -
Hello Alan,
If they are only doing this for Google then it is indeed cloaking, regardless of their intent. That may or may not land them in hot water, but I think Google has provided plenty of other ways to handle this situation.
First and foremost, it would be best if those session IDs and certain other parameters were put into a cookie instead of the URL.
As you probably know, you can tell Google and Bing how to handle the different parameters with their free webmaster tools so it would seem to me like that would be the best approach if you cannot get rid of the parameters all-together.
You can also put a rel canonical tag in the header that references the version of the URL without the parameters.
Force redirecting Googlebot is not a good idea. If, for instance, you wanted to force redirect by IP - as is the case with many global sites that have geo-specific landing pages - then that would be fine as long as you aren't making any special exceptions for Googlebot.
Did this answer your question?
Good luck!
Everett
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
-
301 Redirect Question
I am working with a website and I ran a Screaming Frog and noticed there are 4,600 301's on the website (www.srishoes.com). It seems like the issue is between the www. and without it and they aren't working together. Is this something that the website provider should update and what type of impact might this have on the site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ReunionMarketing
Matt0 -
301 redirect Question
Hi all, I have a client who has a domain lets say www.xyz.de which is redirected 301 to www.zyx.de. Now they're working on a relaunch and they want to use the www.xyz.de as their origibnal doman after that. So, at the end the www.zyx.de - which is indexed by Google - should be redirected to www.xyz.de. It vice versa. So the redirect becomes the original and the original becomes the redirect 😕 Is there anything we have to care off? Or will that run into the hell? Thanx. Seb.
Technical SEO | | TheHecksler0 -
How Many Words To Make Content 'unique?'
Hi All, I'm currently working on creating a variety of new pages for my website. These pages are based upon different keyword searches for cars, for example used BMW in London, Used BMW in Edinburgh and many many more similar kinds of variations. I'm writing some content for each page so that they're completely unique to each other (the cars displayed on each page will also be different so this would not be duplicated either). My question is really, how much content do you think that I'll need on each page? or what is optimal? What would be the minimum you might need? Thank for your help!
Technical SEO | | Sandicliffe0 -
Will a timed 301 redirect work for Googlebot?
Our client is changing brand names and domain names. We know we need to 301 redirect the old domain, but for marketing reasons we want people to see a short message saying that the brand has changed and that they will be redirected. Example: | | Our concern is how, or if, Googlebot will intepret the redirect. Will this accomplish our SEO objective of moving the value of the page to the new domain, or do we need to do just a plain old fashioned 301 redirect and not even let the page load? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | GOODSIR0 -
WMT - Googlebot can't access your site
Hi On our new website which is just a few weeks old upon logging into Webmaster tools I am getting the following message Googlebot can't access your site - The overall error rate for DNS queries is 50% What do I need to do to resolve this, I have never had this problem before with any of the sites - where the domains are with Fasthosts (UK) and hosting is with Dreamhosts. What is the recommended course of action Google mention contacting your host in my case Dreamhost - but what do you need to ask them in a support ticket. When doing a fetch in WMT the fetch status is a success?
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
301 Link Authority 100% Transfer
Our web designer wants to change our pages from the .htm to .html extension. Would 301 redirects transfer our link juice to rankings are not harmed?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Purchasing a site for a 301 Re-direct
Hi Mozzers, I have a question regarding a tactic I'm considering for a client. My client has a web hosting company and is ranking well for his keywords and in position 3 for his main term. There is a site available on flippa that is a keyword rich domain and has a decent link portfolio and domain authority and the price is attractive. I'm considering buying it to 301 it to his domain but I've never done this tactic before. Is this grey/black hat? Has anyone done this before and to what extent did it work? Thanks Bush
Technical SEO | | Bush_JSM0 -
How do I prove to a client their important cat level pages are 301-ing?
I've cut and paste webmaster reports showing the webmaster the "301" page perm moved, however they still believe the pages are running up and normal, as 200s. Its been tough to get them to acknowledge the problem, however I'm certain its negatively affecting results. Any help would be greatly appreciated, asap!
Technical SEO | | ankurv0