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.
We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?
-
We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like:
http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators but as you can see it does not.
Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem:
RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!
-
Yes, That is the best thing you can do. Because seems there have some other issues in configs. And we can not see from here about your all the configs. Anyway the codes we have given you will successfully work once you solve your other problems.
Best Regards
Prasad
-
Thanks Prasad for all your help. And thank you to Ersin also. We have solved the problem. Apparently, our URL re-write at the TomCat level was taking precedence over the .htaccess file. Once our IT director added the appropriate redirect for these domain pages into the URL re-write file, the problem was fixed and those pages now render with a 301-redirect to the correct page one the correct domain. I have encouraged him to write a blog post about this and put it here because there was very little documentation online about TomCat redirects tasking precedence over an .htaccess file.
-
Thanks Prasad,
We tried your suggestion because there was a lot of stuff [1220 lines of code] in our .htaccess file. We stripped everything out except your code, and still had the same problem. Our IT director is wondering if perhaps there is a conflict between the .htaccess file that operates at the Apache level and the URL rewirte file which operates at the TomCat level. He is wondering, does one of them take precedence over the other? In other words, could our URL re-write file be causing the redirects in the .htaccess file to not work properly?
I am thinking maybe we need to hire someone to look at the code in both files in order to figure out where and why we are having a conflict?
Dana
-
Hi,
I think you are doing so many mistakes. First take out all the other codes from your .htaccess file. Then copy only one code from me or from Ersin. While you have some other codes related to this domains redirection there may have conflicts. And your current code work for your root domains mean your .htaccess redirection is working. The problem is you have not used it correctly.
-
Thanks to both Ersin and Prasad. I appreciate your efforts to help very much. My IT director tried both versions of code without success. Here is exactly what he wrote:
" I tried the suggestions without success. I even moved the ccisound
redirects to the top of the file thinking that some other redirect was grabbing
it first, But no go, same results. Top level redirected, lower level not."Any suggestions as to why neither code succeeded at creating a "catch all." ?
-
cprasad's and my purpose are same, so our responses will work. But just some diffrences;
"<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">" line checks wheter Apache's rewrite module is activated or not. If it is then it runs the code after that. The second one is that my rewritecond lines are less than cprasad's, but they all same conditions.By the way, i have just tested it before I wrote it.</ifmodule>
Just do it..
-
Hi,
Do not worry about the differences about the code provided by me and by Ersin. Both are same in functioning. He have just added module activation tags in to the code. So you may use any code which you prefer and works for you.
And the answer for your question about the code you were using, it may not be initiate a wildcard redirection.
Are there more codes inside the .htaccess?
If you can post the exact code without hyper-linking any url then I can tell you the exact reason why your code does not do the job.
Prasad
-
Thanks Ersin,
Can you explain how your coding suggestion is different from Prasad's? I am not a coder so am just wondering if there's a different methodology behind the two suggestions?
-
Yes, a catch-all makes sense to me. what is the difference between your code suggestion and the one just below posted by Ersin A. ? Also, just for our own understanding, can you explain why the code we were using wasn't accomplishing what we wanted? (I just want to be able to explain it to our Web team). Thanks!
-
Hi,
The supplied url for interior page of old domain which you have mentioned not redirecting seems not correct. Because you have linked that text with the new domain. Anyway I have understand your problem. Your problem is
is redirecting to
but
http://www.ccisound.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators
is not redirecting to
http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators
If I have understood correctly, the solution for your problem is, Do a wildcard 301 redirection. It will redirects all the inner pages to the new domain's inner pages. But all the inner pages in new site, must have the same paths as the old site. Hope you understand what I mean.
Anyway when look in to the example urls you have provided it seems both sites have the same content. So there is nothing to worry about. Seems you have just changed domain name.
So anyway use the following code in your .htaccess file inside your root folder
RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^ccisound.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.ccisound.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ "http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1" [R=301,L]First and second line do not write again if those already written inside your .htaccess file.
the above code will initiate a wildcard 301 redirection and will solve your problem. Hope you can improve the code for all the other domains you have. Otherwise post here. I will do it for you.
Regards
Prasad
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
-
Duplicate content, although page has "noindex"
Hello, I had an issue with some pages being listed as duplicate content in my weekly Moz report. I've since discussed it with my web dev team and we decided to stop the pages from being crawled. The web dev team added this coding to the pages <meta name='robots' content='max-image-preview:large, noindex dofollow' />, but the Moz report is still reporting the pages as duplicate content. Note from the developer "So as far as I can see we've added robots to prevent the issue but maybe there is some subtle change that's needed here. You could check in Google Search Console to see how its seeing this content or you could ask Moz why they are still reporting this and see if we've missed something?" Any help much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | rj_dale0 -
How effective are 301 redirects in passing page rank?
I have a blog which is ranking well for certain terms, and would like to repurpose it to better explain these terms it is ranking for, including updating the url to the new term the blog will be about. The plan being to 301 redirect the old url to new. In the past, I've done this with other pages, and have actually lost much of the rankings that I had earned on the original URL. What is your take on this? Maybe repurpose blog, but maintain original URL just to be on the safe side? Thanks
Technical SEO | | CitimarineMoz0 -
Delete old blog posts after 301 redirects to new pages?
Hi Moz Community, I've recently created several new pages on my site using much of the same copy from blog posts on the same topics (we did this for design flexibility and a few other reasons). The blogs and pages aren't exactly identical, as the new pages have much more content, but I don't think there's a point to having both and I don't want to have duplicate content, so we've used 301 redirects from the old blog posts to the new pages of the same topic. My question is: can I go ahead and delete the old blog posts? (Or would there be any reasons I shouldn't delete them?) I'm guessing with the 301 redirects, all will be well in the world and I can just delete the old posts, but I wanted to triple check to make sure. Thanks so much for your feedback, I really appreciate it!
Technical SEO | | TaraLP1 -
Can iFrames count as duplicate content on either page?
Hi All Basically what we are wanting to do is insert an iframe with some text on onto a lot of different pages on one website. Does google crawl the content that is in an iFrame? Thanks
Technical SEO | | cttgroup0 -
Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)
I'm considering switching my main site from a .org to .io address; the .org is an exact match domain which helped to kickstart it a few years ago and now has about 50% repeat visitors, but was thrown off the Apple affiliation program for trademark infringement. I've found and purchased a nice (non-infringing) .io domain, and I've read the advice here on how to properly 301 the old domain; but my question is - does it matter that it's .io? Is this going to significantly hurt my rankings, even when everything has been 301'd properly? Another thought I had is that I may actually come out better off in the long run, what with Google penalties being applied to exact match domains. Is this a ranking suicide? If so, I'm tempted to leave it as is; even without the affiliation, it's making a good amount every month in ad fees that I don't want to disrupt. Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | w0lfiesmithUK0 -
Is it worth setting up 301 redirects from old products to new products?
This year we are using a new supplier and they have provided us a product database of approx. 5k products. About 80% of these products were in our existing database but once we have installed the new database all the URLs will have changed. There is no quick way to match the old products with the new products so we would have to manually match all 5k products if we were were to setup 301 rules for the old products pointing to the new products. Of course this would take a lot of time. So the options are: 1. Is it worth putting in this effort to make the 301 rules? 2. Or are we okay just to delete the old product pages, let the SE see the 404 and just wait for it to index the new pages? 3. Or, as a compromise, should we 301 the old product page to the new category page as this is a lot quicker for us do do than redirecting to the new product page?
Technical SEO | | indigoclothing0 -
Does 'framing' a website create duplicate content?
Something I have not come across before, but hope others here are able offer advice based on experience: A client has independently created a series of mini-sites, aimed at targeting specific locations. The tactic has worked very well and they have achieved a large amount of well targeted traffic as a result. Each mini-site is different but then in the nav, if you want to view prices or go to the booking page, that then links to what at first appears to be their main site. However, you then notice that the URL is actually situated on the mini-site. What they have done is 'framed' the main site so that it appears exactly the same even when navigating through this exact replica site. Checking the code, there is almost nothing there - in fact there is actually no content at all. Below the head, there is a piece of code: <frameset rows="*" framespacing=0 frameborder=0> <frame src="[http://www.example.com](view-source:http://www.yellowskips.com/)" frameborder=0 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0> <noframes>Your browser does not support frames. Click [here](http://www.example.com) to view.noframes> frameset> Given that main site content does not appear to show in the source code, do we have an issue with duplicate content? This issue is that these 'referrals' are showing in Analytics, despite the fact that the code does not appear in the source, which is slightly confusing for me. They have done this without consultation and I'm very concerned that this could potentially be creating duplicate content of their ENTIRE main site on dozens of mini-sites. I should also add that there are no links to the mini-sites from the main site, so if you guys advise that this is creating duplicate content, I would not be worried about creating a link-wheel if I advise them to link directly to the main site rather than the framed pages. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RiceMedia0 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0