Crazy long weird URLs... help
-
I have a HTML website, mysite1.com, and I placed a link on the home page to another one of my sites, mysite2.com
Today I checked the links to mysite2.com in Majestic and noticed 24 links coming from the mysite1.com instead of just one link.
The URLs from mysite1.com that are showing in Majestic are like this
mysite1.com,was inherited from a friend and I believe that it was originally built in Frontpage.
Can you tell me how I can get rid of these multiple links as I only want 1 showing from the home page
Thanks in advance
-
I would need to see this to give you any real feedback on it John but general rule of thumb is if Google looked at these links, would they see and understand the reasoning for the links to be there?
Andy
-
I see what you mean. Well the links from the home page sites are going from sites that are for information purposes only, then link to the service provider recommended by that website.
I wouldn't see anything wrong with this. There are 5 sites linking from the home page to my main site out of 120 backlinks. I presume that this doesnt look bad in Google's eyes
-
I can't really help you with the htaccess stuff John, but regarding links from the homepage to another external site, this has always been a questionable practice. Why would you want to direct someone to another site as soon as they got to your homepage? Google see this in a similar way.
However, if there is a very good reason for the link to appear there and if it formed part of a good sentence with accurate anchor text and wasn't trying to push people there just to get traffic up, then I can see no harm - bit hard to judge without seeing though.
Andy
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for helping out.
Can you tell me why you think home page links are bad? I actually started a question about this last week but didnt get many replys. Do you think getting home page links a bad thing to do?
Ive done some digging and found that when I go to mysite1.com in majestic and look at Pages, its showing all the long URLs that I found pointing to mysite2.com
So I guess that at some point in its life, these pages have been indexed by Google.
These URLs all start with a ? i.e. mysite1.com/?561796
So I am guessing the best way to solve this is to make all URLs that start with a /? be redirected to the root.
Unfortunetly I have no idea how to write this in the htaccess file
-
First of all, be careful with off-site links from your homepage unless there is a very good reason for it. If there isn't, I would always no-follow it so Google doesn't see an unethical link.
With reagards what you are seeing in Majestic, when you hover over the link, what do you see? Is it just a normal HTML link or has it been completed another way?
Andy
-
Ok I have noticed that any URL with ? at the end shows the home page.
mysite1.com/? will show the home page
mysite1.com/?111 will show the home page
etc etc
So I guess I need to redirect anything with a ? to the home page using a 301.
Can someone tell me what the code will be to do that in the htaccess file?
-
Hi John
PM me if you like, I'll have a look for you. Promise not to repeat the domain name.
-
Hi,
Unfortunately I cant do that on a public forum.
But I can tell you all the URLs look like the one Ive posted, loads of numbers etc.
It isnt a dynamic site so these actual URLs are not live pages.
When you visit these URLs, they are just duplicates of the home page
Hope that helps a little
-
Hi John
Could you provide the address so we can look please. Would be making wild guesses else.
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
-
Video SERP Help
Hello Friends,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KINQDOM
I try to appear on search results of property related search terms with my property videos. Here is a sample property video
http://www.antalyahomes.com/videositemap.asp May you please check it and tell me what I do wrong? Thanks in advance for your time.0 -
Internal links and URL shortners
Hi guys, what are your thoughts using bit.ly links as internal links on blog posts of a website? Some posts have 4/5 bit.ly links going to other pages of our website (noindexed pages). I have nofollowed them so no seo value is lost, also the links are going to noindexed pages so no need to pass seo value directly. However what are your thoughts on how Google will see internal links which have essential become re-direct links? They are bit.ly links going to result pages basically. Am I also to assume the tracking for internal links would also be better using google analytics functionality? is bit.ly accurate for tracking clicks? Any advice much appreciated, I just wanted to double check this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Penguin Penalty On A Duplicate url
Hi I have noticed a distinct drop in traffic to a page on my web site which occurred around April of last year. Doing some analysis of links pointing to this page, I found that most were sitewide and exact match commercial anchor text. I think the obvious conclusion from this is I got slapped by Penguin although I didn't receive a warning in Webmaster Tools. The page in question was ranking highly for our targeted terms and the url was structured like this: companyname.com/category/index.php The same page is still ranking for some of those terms, but it is the duplicate url: companyname.com/category/ The sitewide problem is associated with links going to the index.php page. There aren't too many links pointing to the non index.php page. My question is this - if we were to 301 redirect index.php to the non php page, would this be detrimental to the rankings we are getting today? ie would we simply redirect the penguin effect to the non php page? If anybody has come across a similar problem or has any advice, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sicseo0 -
More Indexed Pages than URLs on site.
According to webmaster tools, the number of pages indexed by Google on my site doubled yesterday (gone from 150K to 450K). Usually I would be jumping for joy but now I have more indexed pages than actual pages on my site. I have checked for duplicate URLs pointing to the same product page but can't see any, pagination in category pages doesn't seem to be indexed nor does parameterisation in URLs from advanced filtration. Using the site: operator we get a different result on google.com (450K) to google.co.uk (150K). Anyone got any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidLenehan0 -
URL stucture like Zappos?
Hi, My site structure looks like this. domainname.com/nl/holidayhouses/villa-costa
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | remcozwaan
domainname.com/nl/apartments/apartment-caifem ect. I just went to zappos to research the site and het notice me that zappos.com has no directories. If i implement this my structure looks like this. domainname.com/nl/holidayhouse-villa-costa
domainname.com/nl/apartments-apartment-caifem Is this a better approach? Ciao, Remco0 -
What Should I Do With My URL Names?
I release property on my blog each week, and it has come to the point we will get property in the same area as we have had in the past. So, I name my URL /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]/ for the first property in that area right. Now I get a different property in that same area and the URL will have to be named /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2/. Now I'm not sure if this is a major issue or not, but I'm sure there must be a better way than this, and I don't really want to take down our past properties - unless you can give me good reason too, of course? So before I start getting URLs like this: /blah-blah-blah-[area of property]-2334343534654/ (well, ok, maybe not that bad! But you get my point) I wanted to see what everyones opinion on it is 🙂 Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathanRolande0 -
URL Error or Penguin Penalty?
I am currently having a major panic as our website www.uksoccershop.com has been largely dropped from Google. We have not made any changes recently and I am not sure why this is happening, but having heard all sorts of horror stories of penguin update, I am fearing the worst. If you google "uksoccershop" you will see that the homepage does not rank. We previously ranked in the top 3 for "football shirts" but now we don't, although on page 2, 3 and 4 you will see one of our category pages ranking (this didn't used to happen). Some rankings are intact, but many have disappeared completely and in some cases been replaced by other pages on our site. I should point out our existing rankings have been consistently there for 5-6 years until today. I logged into webmaster tools and thankfully there is no warning message from Google about spam, etc, but what we do have is 35,000 URL errors for pages which are accessible. An example of this is: | URL: | http://www.uksoccershop.com/categories/5_295_327.html | | Error details In Sitemaps Linked from Last crawled: 6/20/12First detected: 6/15/12Googlebot couldn't access the contents of this URL because the server had an internal error when trying to process the request. These errors tend to be with the server itself, not with the request. Is it possible this is the cause of the issue (we are not currently sure why the URL's are being blocked) and if so, how severe is it and how recoverable?If that is unlikely to cause the issue, what would you recommend our next move is?All help is REALLY REALLY appreciated 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840 -
Can your site be penalized for changing the url structure and if so how long till you get back?
I'm doing well on yahoo and bing and the only reason I can think of for why I'm not showing on Google is because I changed the url structure a couple of months ago. I have solid on and off page done for this site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deciph220