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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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. Infinite Redirect Loop without trailing slash, please help

    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.

    Infinite Redirect Loop without trailing slash, please help

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    11
    3889
    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.
    • debc
      debc last edited by

      I've been searching for an answer all day, I can't seem to figure this out.

      When I Fetch my blog as Google(http://www.mysite.com/blog) WITHOUT a trailing slash at the end, I get this error:

      The page seems to redirect to itself. This may result in an infinite redirect loop

      **HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently**

      When I Fetch my blog as Google WITH the trailing slash at the end(http://www.mysite.com/blog/), it is fine without errors.

      When I pull it up in a browser comes up fine both with and without the trailing slash.

      My .htaccess file in the root directory contains this:

      RewriteEngine On
      RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.htm\ HTTP/
      RewriteRule ^index.htm$ http://www.mysite.com/ [R=301,L]
      RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.com$
      RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

      My .htaccess file in the blog directory contains this:

      BEGIN WordPress

      <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
       RewriteBase /blog/
       RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^./index.php/. [NC]
       RewriteRule ^index.php/(.*)$ http://www.mysite.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
      RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
      RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule>

      END WordPress

      Do I have something incorrectly coded in these .htaccess files that could be causing this? Or is there something else I should look at? Thank you for any help!!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • debc
        debc @debc last edited by

        I combined the htaccess files (putting the blog rewrite rule to the bottom of the file) now having just one htacess in the root directory and unfortunately it did not work. When I tried it, all the links on the blog would not work, they were all "page not found" so I reverted it back to what I originally had... Here is what the combined htaccess file looked like:

        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.htm\ HTTP/
        RewriteRule ^index.htm$ http://www.example.com/ [R=301,L]
        RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$
        RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

        <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
         RewriteBase /blog/
         RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.php/. [NC]
         RewriteRule ^index.php/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
        RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
        RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]</ifmodule>

        Thanks again for any insight!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • SEOKeith
          SEOKeith @debc last edited by

          Hey Debora,

          Any luck?

          Keith

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • GeorgeAndrews
            GeorgeAndrews @debc last edited by

            Hello Debora,

            Make sure you keep copies of your .htaccess files before you make changes and, if you can, use a test site to test your changes first before you make changes on your live website.

            I'm not sure how your website is set up so I don't know if combining the two files will accomplish what you are looking for.

            Whatever you do, make sure you have backups.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • SEOKeith
              SEOKeith @debc last edited by

              Yes as I said above 🙂

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • debc
                debc @debc last edited by

                Thanks for your response Keith, I'll give it a try and let you know!

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • debc
                  debc @GeorgeAndrews last edited by

                  Thanks George.  Please forgive me, I am a newbie at this!  I took a look at the link you provided, and I don't fully understand what they are explaining.  What I did understand is that having 2 htaccess files in different directories caused a problem with their code.  Do you think combining the two files into one on the root directory will make a difference for me?

                  SEOKeith GeorgeAndrews 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • SEOKeith
                    SEOKeith @debc last edited by

                    Sorry, I completely misread this question (I missed the part where you said you had to .htaccess files!).

                    Yes put one .htaccess file in the root dir, add the blog rewrite rule to the bottom of the file.

                    Let me know how it goes.

                    Keith

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • debc
                      debc @SEOKeith last edited by

                      Thanks Keith.  I tried it and it is still looping.  Do you think it has something to do with having 2 different .htaccess files?  Should I combine them into just one in the root directory?

                      SEOKeith debc 4 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • SEOKeith
                        SEOKeith last edited by

                        Yuk mod_rewrite...

                        Try:

                        RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.php\ HTTP/
                        RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.example.com/blog/ [R=301,L]

                        You may wish to add $1 on the end

                        RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index.php\ HTTP/
                        RewriteRule ^index.php$ http://www.example.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]

                        Let me know if that stops it looping...

                        Keith

                        debc 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • GeorgeAndrews
                          GeorgeAndrews last edited by

                          Try here. Maybe that will help.

                          Edit: Pretty sure it's your root directory .htaccess file that is causing the looping. I'd start with that.

                          debc 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • 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

                          • nkennett

                            Need some help understanding SEO - Please help before I lose [pull out] all my hair

                            technical seo getting beaten sites with no seo ranking 1

                            I'm new to SEO, and am stubbornly trying to educate myself. I have a telescope shop in Canada, it's a small business that we run on the side. We're driving lots of traffic through FB and our outreach programs but I really want to increase our presence on search. We released a new website back in January and it killed some of our rankings. We're working our way back with a very specific set of efforts on regular SEO: Metadata and titles, although it seems that's not super relevant Building high quality backlinks and eliminating any spammy backlinks Rewriting product listings so that they are original content though I'm not sure how important this is in e-commerce Writing high quality articles and blog posts Working relevant keywords into our product pages and titles I understand that good SEO is about pushing on all the levers, and trying to make sure that your site is as valuable to the end user as possible. We're making some good progress, but I'm puzzled by the #1 shop in Canada. They don't put any apparent effort into SEO and they still rank #1 on every key product we compete with them on. I've worked with two separate, highly ranked and regarded SEO firms on this and neither has been able to tell my why this other site ranks so highly. Here's a specific example on a popular product that we both sell, the Celestron NexStar 8SE. Here’s the link to Telescope Canada’s page for their Celestron 8SE: https://telescopescanada.ca/products/celestron-nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope-11069 Here’s a link to the Celestron 8SE page from the manufacturer website: https://www.celestron.com/products/nexstar-8se-computerized-telescope Telescopes Canada has just copied and pasted. There is no original content aside from adding the shipping and return policy to the tab, and having some options for selecting accessories on the page. Here is our page: https://all-startelescope.com/products/celestron-nexstar-8se We have higher page authority, higher domain authority, and they keyword analyzer in moz says that our page is higher quality than the Telescopes Canada page. I can’t find a single metric on any tool (ubbersuggest, Moz, ahrefs, semrush) that says Telescopes Canada is a better site, or has a better NexStar 8SE product page. But they keep ranking ahead of us, and right at the top of google search. Our titles are good, our metadata is good (but I don’t think that’s been a serious ranking factor for about ten years). Our text is original, it’s relevant, we have healthy internal links to the page. According to Moz's page ranker it's 20 points higher than Telescope Canada's page. We have invensted in some excellent blog content, we’re adding new products to the website so that we rank for more keywords. All of those things are helping, but I fundamentally don’t understand why Telescopes Canada is #1 almost across the board on every key product in our market. There is something that I’m not seeing here. Can you see any metric, any tool in your toolbox that indicates why they rank at the top, or even higher than we do for in these search terms specific to that product: Celestron NexStar 8SE
                            NexStar 8SE
                            Celestron NexStar 8SE Canada
                            NexStar 8SE Canada I have a feeling it's something technical that I'm missing, but I'm not sure how obvious it is with two 'professional' firms not finding it. I'd really appreciate any help or insight that you can offer.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nkennett
                            0
                          • 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
                          • Sayers

                            Googlebot being redirected but not users?

                            Hi, We seem to have a slightly odd issue. We noticed that a number of our location category pages were slipping off 1 page, and onto page 2 in our niche. On inspection, we noticed that our Arizona page had started ranking in place of a number of other location pages - Cali, Idaho, NJ etc. Weirdly, the pages they had replaced were no longer indexed, and would remain so, despite being fetched, tweeted etc. One test was to see when the dropped out pages had been last crawled, or at least cached. When conducting the 'cache:domain.com/category/location' on these pages, we were getting 301 redirected to, you guessed it, the Arizona page. Very odd. However, the dropped out pages were serving 200 OK when run through header checker tools, screaming frog etc. On the face of it, it would seem Googlebot is getting redirected when it is hitting a number of our key location pages, but users are not. Has anyone experienced anything like this? The theming of the pages are quite different in terms of content, meta etc. Thanks.

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers
                            0
                          • ArchMedia

                            Should I redirect images when I migrate my site

                            We are about to migrate a large website with a fair few images (20,000). At the moment we include images in the sitemap.xml so they are indexed by Google and drive traffic (not sure how I can find out how much though). Current image slugs are like:
                            http://website.com/assets/images/a2/65680/thumbnails/638x425-crop.jpg?1402460458 Like on the old site, images on the new website will also have unreadable cache slugs, like:
                            http://website.com/site_media/media/cache/ce/7a/ce7aeffb1e5bdfc8d4288885c52de8e3.jpg All content pages on the new site will have the same slugs as on the old site. Should I go through the trouble of redirecting all these images?

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia
                            0
                          • khi5

                            Infinite Scrolling: how to index all pictures

                            I have a page where I want to upload 20 pictures that are in a slideshow. Idea is that pictures will only load when users scroll down the page (otherwise too heavy loading). I see documentation on how to make this work and ensure search engines index all content. However, I do not see any documentation how to make this work for 20 pictures in a slideshow. It seems impossible to get a search engines to index all such pictures, when it shows only as users scroll down a page. This is documentation I am already familiar with, and which does not address my issue:
                            http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/02/infinite-scroll-search-friendly.html http://www.appelsiini.net/projects/lazyload http://luis-almeida.github.io/unveil/ thank you

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
                            0
                          • CommT

                            Should I redirect my xml sitemap?

                            Hi Mozzers, We have recently rebranded with a new company name, and of course this necessitated us to relaunch our entire website onto a new domain. I watched the Moz video on how they changed domain, copying what they did pretty much to the letter. (Thank you, Moz for sharing this with the community!) It has gone incredibly smoothly. I told all my bosses that we may see a 40% reduction in traffic / conversions in the short term. In the event (and its still very early days) we have in fact seen a 15% increase in traffic and our new website is converting better than before so an all-round success! I was just wondering if you thought I should redirect my XML sitemap as well? So far I haven't, but despite us doing the change of address thing in webmaster tools, I can see Google processed the old sitemap xml after we did the change of address etc. What do you think? I know we've been very lucky with the outcome of this rebrand but I don't want to rest on my laurels or get tripped up later down the line. Thanks everyone! Amelia

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT
                            0
                          • SCW

                            Redirect at Registrar or Server

                            Hi folks, I have run into a situation were a new client has 3 TLDs (e.g. mycompany.com, mycompany.org and mycompany.biz), all with the same content. They are on a Windows IIS environment, which I am not familiar with. Until now, all of my clients have been Linux/Apache environment, so I always dealt with these issues utilizing htaccess. Currently all resolve to the same IP, but the URL remains the same in the browser address field (e.g. if you type-in mycompany.org - it remains as such). We want the .org and .biz version to 301 Redirect to the .com TLD. I am wondering what the best practice might be in this situation? Could we simply redirect at the registrar level or would implementation at the server level be best? If so, I would really appreciate an example from someone with experience implementing redirects on IIS. Thank you!

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SCW
                            0
                          • AndyMacLean

                            Subdomains and SEO - Should we redirect to subfolder?

                            A new client has mainsite.com and a large numer of city specific sub domains i.e. albany.mainsite.com. I think that these subdomains would actually work better as subfolders i.e mainsite.com/albany rather than albany.mainsite.com. The majority of links on the subdomains link to the main site anyway i.e. mainsite.com/contactus rather than albany.mainsite.com/contactus. Having mostly main domain links on a subdomain doesnt seem like clever link architecture to me and maybe even spammy. Im not overly familiar with redirecting subdomains to subfolders. If we go the route of 301'ing subdomains to subfolders any advice/warnings?

                            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean
                            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.