Canonicalization interact with 301 redirects?
-
This is a interesting one I think.
I have recently taken down some product list pages from our website www.towelsrus.co.uk. These have canonicalisation in place to deal with pages where a query string is generated depending on the search criteria.
When I put a 301 redirect in place the target page redirects fine, however webmaster tools then errors with 404 on all canonicalised pages.
Is this correct behaviour and how do we get over this?
-
If I'm (we're) understanding your situation correctly, then I'd have to agree with Mike. You should 301-redirect all of the versions, not "chain" the canonical to a 301. That's going to produce very unpredictable results at best.
-
Just remember that a canonical is a signal not a directive. Google and other search engines can choose whether or not to listen to your signal. So make sure those "duplicate" pages need to exist as they are currently. In some cases it may make more sense to either update the page with fresh, original, and relevant content or to have the page marked NoIndex depending on the situation.
-
Thanks chaps. The other issue it also flags up is duplicate data as now no canonicalisation is in place. double whammy. I'll get the web company to allow us to update these for the future.
-
I'm not 100% sure why its throwing 404s because I've never had that exact problem when doing the same thing on any sites I work on but I agree with TextMarketing on updating the canonicals. If you originally had Page 1, Page 2, and Page 3 canonicalized to Page A and now Page A has been 301'd to Page B, you should update Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3 to have their canonical tags pointing to Page B instead of the 301 page.
-
If I'm understanding this right, you need to update your canonical tags with the pages the 301 is redirecting to.
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
-
Is This 301 redirection correct??
Hello Everyone, I have Added This in .htaccess. Options +FollowSymlinks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | falguniinnovative
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L] ErrorDocument 404 /index.html Is this Correct ?? or need any change, please help, thanx in advace .0 -
How many redirects are too many?
Hello Everyone, I currently have a dynamic site and it is my understanding that switching to a static site would be beneficial. I already have some 301's in place from when my site had a .php extension to the new extension now with ./?... etc. Is it okay to re redirect them? How many redirects are too many? Thank you in advance for suggestions. Have a Fabulous Friday! Sandra
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rankmenow0 -
Persistent listings or 301 redirects better for SEO?
Imagine these 2 scenarios for an ecommerce listing. 1. A listing that only closes once stock runs out 2. A listing that relists every 7 days assuming stock has run out and doing a 301 redirect to the latest version of that listing (imagine it relists several times) You might ask why on earth we would have the 2nd scenario, but we are an auction site where some listings can't be bid on. In other words those Buy Now only listings are also part of the auction model - they close after 7 days. For me it is a no-brainer that scenario 1 is better for SEO, and I have my ideas on why this is better for SEO than the second scenario such as age, SERP CTR, link equity not being diluted by 301 redirects not changing every 7 days when the listing relists multiple times etc. I was wondering if someone could articulate better than I possibly could why scenario 1 is better for SEO, and why scenario 1 would rank better in the SERPS....would it? Many thanks! Cheers, Simon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sichristie0 -
How to redirect an url in .htaccess when "redirect 301" doesnt work
I have an odd page url, generated by a link from an external website, it has: %5Cu0026size=27.4KB%5Cu0026p=dell%20printers%20uk%5Cu0026oid=333302b6be58eaa914fbc7de45b23926%5Cu0026ni=21%5Cu0026no=24%5Cu0026tab=organic%5Cu0026sigi=11p3eqh65%5Cu0026tt=Dell%205210n%20A4%20Mono%20Laser%20Printer%20from%20Printer%20Experts%5Cu0026u=fb ,after a .jpg image url, and I can't get it redirect using the redirect 301 in .htaccess to the properly image url as I use to do with the rest of not found urls eg: /15985.jpg%5Cu0026size=27.4KB%5Cu0026p=dell%20printers%20uk%5Cu0026oid=333302b6be58eaa914fbc7de45b23926%5Cu0026ni=21%5Cu0026no=24%5Cu0026tab=organic%5Cu0026sigi=11p3eqh65%5Cu0026tt=Dell%205210n%20A4%20Mono%20Laser%20Printer%20from%20Printer%20Experts%5Cu0026u=fb to just: /15985.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Status0 -
When should you redirect a domain completely?
We moved a website over to a new domain name. We used 301 redirects to redirect all the pages individually (around 150 redirects). So my question is, when should we just kill the old site completely and just redirect (forward/point) the old domain over to the new one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | co.mc0 -
301 redirect on Windows IIS. HELP!
Hi My six-year-old domain has always existed in four forms: http://www**.**mydomain.com/index.html http://mydomain.com/index.html http://mydomain.com/ http://www.mydomain.com My webmaster claims it’s “impossible” to do a 301 redirect from the first three to the fourth. I need simple instructions to guide him. The site’s hosted on Windows running IIS Here’s his rationale: These are all the same page, so they can’t redirect to themselves. Index.html is the default page that loads automatically if you don’t specify a page. If I put a redirect into index.html it would just run an infinite redirect loop. As you can see from the IIS set up, both www.mydomain and mydomain.com point to the same location ( VIEW IMAGE HERE ) _Both of these use index.html as the default document ( VIEW IMAGE 2 HERE ) _
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jeepster0 -
301 a PDF?
Hi Website A is moving to Website B. Website A has a number of PDFs - obviously I cant do a '301 redirect' on them. Any suggestions what to do with the PDFs? Many thanks in advance Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5550 -
301 Redirects After Company Acquisition
We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt1