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.
Blog subdomain not redirecting
-
Over the last few weeks I have been focused on fixing high and medium priority issues, as reported by the Moz crawler, after a recent transition to WordPress. I've made great progress, getting the high priority issues down from several hundred (various reasons, but many duplicates for things like non-www and www versions) to just five last week.
And then there's this weeks report.
For reasons I can't fathom, I am suddenly getting hundreds of duplicate content pages of the form http://blog.<domain>.com</domain> (being duplicates with the http://www.<domain>.com</domain> versions). I'm really unclear on why these suddenly appeared.
I host my own WordPress site ie WordPress.org stuff. In Options / General everything refers to http://www.<domain>.com</domain> and has done for a number of weeks. I have no idea why the blog versions of the pages have suddenly appeared.
FWIW, the non-www version of my pages still redirect to the www version, as I would expect.
I'm obviously pretty concerned by this so any pointers greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Mark
-
So far so good - every URL I try to my site is now redirected to the www subdomain and, to date, I am unaware of any side effects. I will keep monitoring but all looks good at this point.
Thanks again to everyone who helped with this.
Mark
-
Looks like that, or some approximation thereof has you sorted. I would just like to add that you should keep an eye on Webmaster Tools.
-
Take a copy of the htaccess file, if something goes wrong, then you can always go back
-
I'm hesitant to say; "Do X." because I'm not really sure what will happen - with the redirect plugin in the mix. I imagine a lot, if not all of the subdomain folders and pages have already been redirected via the plugin. So I imagine the path of least disaster at the moment is just redirecting the subdomain (sub.domain.com) to the main domain (www.domain.com) alone.
I could be totally wrong, but this one is weird.
Test out the rule and then push live. Here is the code to redirect just the subdomain to just the www domain:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^blog.domain.com$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/?$
RewriteRule .* http://www.domain.com [R=301,L]Double check it, triple check it and then push live. Keep a very close eye on it. I really hope we don't end up with a loop.
-
Yep, totally agree with the thinking and prefer that approach. I researched the non-www (blank subdomain) solution a while back and the rewrite rule I used was suggested in a number of places. But your suggest seems much more robust, providing there's no gotcha (I know of none).
I implemented this and it seems to be working (after a bit of a detour because of caching :)). So, I think I am good and will monitor.
A big thanks to you and Travis. I very much appreciate the prompt responses.
Mark
-
The logic I used is like this.
rather than have a rules like
If wearing jeans, you must wear the school uniform
If wearing hoodie, you must wear the school uniform
If wearing a thong, you must wear the school uniform
If naked, you must wear the school uniformyou only need one rule
If not wearing school uniform, you must wear the school uniform -
in htaccess "!" means not so try this
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.domain.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]also when using regex special chars like "." should be escaped with "" see above www.domain.com
-
Here's the only (remotely) relevant entry I have in my .htaccess file (replacing my actual domain with <domain>):</domain>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^<domain>.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.<domain>.com/$1 [R=301,L]</domain></domain>The intent of this is to redirect all URLs of the form http://<domain>.com/page</domain> to http://www.<domain>.com/page.</domain> I implemented that a while back and it seems to be working just fine.
I can't find any reference to the blog subdomain. I suspect what I need to do is implement something like this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^blog.<domain>.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.<domain>.com/$1 [R=301,L]</domain></domain>By the way, despite appearances I am "the guy" for this site. I've completely installed/configured it from scratch so anything broken is my fault
I have the smarts to backup, test, verify, restore etc so I can make changes to .htaccess myself. I just don't have significant experience of the .htaccess file itself so just need to be cautious as I go. But it's all me
Dare I suggest that what I am trying to achieve here (redirect from the blog subdomain to the www subdomain) shouldn't be too tricky?
Thanks.
Mark
-
Ok, I think I understand a bit better, you don't have a blog?
Then I would remove the dns record for blog, if you cant do that then yes you could 301 redirectYou can do this in one redirect following the logic
if not www.domain.com then redirect to www.domain.com -
Thanks again, Alan.
I am thinking that what I probably need is to 301 redirect all URLs of the form http://blog.<domain>.com/page</domain> to http://www.<domain>.com/page</domain>, yes? In short I don't want to use the blog subdomain anywhere so, to avoid SEO inefficiencies, I should presumably redirect as above so that everything ends up at the www subdomain.
I think
Thanks.
Mark
-
Sorry missed the bit about blog.
obviously blog.domain.com should not 301 to www
it should point to the correct site, then all reports and google will sort themselves out.so add one more step, test that blog does in fact resolve to the correct site
-
Travis,
I want to be really sure I understand what you are saying so let me clarify.
I do have a blog DNS entry, referring to the server (just like I have www, to the same IP address). In a "clean" installation, any page being requested to that server, SHOULD redirect to the www subdomain because I have www.<domain>.com</domain> specified in General \ Settings. Is that accurate so far?
However, "something" (probably in .htaccess) is kicking in that allows URLs with the blog subdomain to resolve (no redirection), regardless of what is in General \ Settings, yes?
Thanks.
Mark
-
Thanks Alan. I would like to verify one aspect of this.
Somehow, Moz/Google located the blog.<domain>.com pages. I honestly don't know why but I assume that if these pages have actual resolved all along, as they do now, then I could potentially have external URLs pointing to them, yes? If so, then if I just follow the suggestion you have made then won't I continue to have duplicate content issues? I fear I am missing something from your suggestion :)</domain>
PS: I just realized what you perhaps meant. I have generally seen references to "non-www" to mean URLs of the form http://<domain>.com</domain> ie. with no subdomain. But I am guessing you mean "non-www" in the broader sense - absolutely ANYTHING that doesn't have the www subdomain should redirect there. That's presumably what you had in mind, yes?
Thanks again.
Mark
-
This particular situation won't sort itself out. There's a sub involved and I suspect it's a rewrite rule that shouldn't be there. The developer appears to be somewhat sophisticated as they're using X-FRAME-OPTIONS in a way that doesn't allow iFrames to work outside of the domain.
So who knows what goodies await in .htaccess.
-
Test that non-www 301's to www
Make sure that all your internal links point to www, you don't want links that you control going thought a redirect.If those 2 are ok, then forget the report it will sort itself out over time.
-
Okay, here's what I got:
The plugin supposedly operates independently of .htaccess. So taking that at face value, I don't think you're going to get what you need out of the plugin.
I would imagine the .htaccess file is much the same as it was when the site launched, or when it was last modified by the developer. So that file is likely going to need editing to achieve what you need. However, that file isn't something you just want to play with in a live environment.
And it's not something anyone in their right mind would blindly say; "Yeah just copy and paste this rule!"
I would talk to Dale and see if he has a block of free time coming up.
-
We are using the Redirection plugin.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
However, everything I have entered is at the page level (redirect page1 to page2). I don't know if the Redirection plugin even supports subdomain redirection. I am checking that now (a quick scan of the support page for that plugin finds every question related to subdomains unanswered :)).
It seems the working assumption is that nothing changed and that Moz/Google just found this for the first time, which I hadn't considered.
Thanks.
Mark
-
You are going to have to add a manual rewrite rule to the htaccess, preferably at the top. This might help, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1321123/redirect-from-subdomain-to-domain-htaccess But like Travis said, be careful, make a back up, because you can break your site doing this.
-
You mentioned in the above thread that you're using a redirection plugin. What is it's name? Beyond that Yoast and All in One both allow you to edit htaccess entries. (I despise that feature, btw.)
-
Thank you Travis. I have never actually edited the .htaccess file directly (not even 100% sure where it is :)) but I guess what you suggest could be put there through other means (plugins, etc).
Just to make sure I understand, though, what I actually want is a 301 redirect for all pages under the blog subdomain to the www domain. I'm not overly familiar with the .htaccess syntax for redirects (but can research) - but if you happen to have the syntax for that I'd be appreciative
Thanks again.
Mark
-
Thank you Leslie. Yes, I can browse to the blog... pages and they remain that way in the browsers URL field. So, the thinking is that this has been around all along and Moz/Google just found it? Interesting.
So, any idea on how I would fix this? I do use the Redirection plugin (and have been entering quite a few redirects recently) but as far as I can tell that plugin allows me to redirect between pages, rather than redirect subdomains i.e. I can redirect http://www.<domain>.com/page1</domain> to http://www.<domain>.com/page2</domain> but not www -> something else.
Thank you again, Leslie.
-
I'm going to guess that you have something that looks like this in your .htaccess file:
RewriteRule ^blog/$ http://blog.website.com [L,NC,R=301]WARNING
You can knock your site down with the slightest syntax error when you mess with the htaccess file. Proceed with caution.
Let us know what you find.
-
Can you access the pages at blog.yoursite.com? Do they show up in the browser? It could be an issue that has always been there that Google just found.
-
I should add that I do have a DNS record for the blog subdomain. However, that has been in place all along, including the last few weeks where these duplicate content errors didn't exist. Given the settings in Settings \ General I would expect these to be redirected to http://www.<domain>.com</domain>, which seems to be what was happening up until this weeks report.
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
-
Someone redirected his website to ours
Hi all, I have strange issue as someone redirected website http://bukmachers.pl to ours https://legalnibukmacherzy.pl We don't know exactly what to do with it. I checked backlinks and the website had some links which now redirect to us. I also checked this website on wayback machine and back in 2017 this website had some low quality content but in 2018 they made similar redirection to current one but to different website (our competitor). Can such redirection be harmful for us? Should we do something with this or leave it, as google stop encouraging to disavow low quality links.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kahuna_Charles1 -
Getting SEO Juice back after Redirect
Hi, On my website, many product pages were redirected over time to its product category, due to the product being unavailable. I understand with a 301 redirect, the final URL would have lost about 15% of the link juice. However - if after some time (e.g. 2 months, or 1 year) I remove the redirection - is the original page going to have any SEO juice, or did it already lose all of it? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading10 -
301 redirect with /? in URL
For a Wordpress site that has the ending / in the URL with a ? after it... how can you do a 301 redirect to strip off anything after the / For example how to take this URL domain.com/article-name/?utm_source=feedburner and 301 to this URL domain.com/article-name/ Thank you for the help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Use of subdomains, subdirectories or both?
Hello, i would like your advice on a dilemma i am facing. I am working a new project that is going to release soon, thats a network of users with personal profiles seperated in categories for example lets say the categories are colors. So let say i am a member and i belong in red color categorie and i got a page where i update my personal information/cv/resume as well as a personal blog thats on that page. So the main site is giving the option to user to search for members by the criteria of color. My first idea is that all users should own a subdomain (and this is how its developed so far) thats easy to use and since the domain name is really small (just 3 letters) i believe subdomain worth since personal site will be easy to remember. My dilemma is should all users own a subdomain, a subdirectory or both and if both witch one should be the canonical? Since it said that search engines treat subdomains as different stand-alone sites, whats best for the main site? to show multiple search results with profiles in subdomains or subdirectories? What if i use both? meaning in search results i use search directory url for each profile while same time each profile owns a subdomains as well? and if so which one should be the canonical? Thanks in advance, C
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HaCos0 -
Changing a parent category and 301 redirecting
I have a set of three pages that are subpages of a parent. The structure is as follows: mysite.com/directory/personal-widgets mysite.com/directory/commercial-widgets mysite.com/directory/widgets-services The partent page name "directory" really isn't working for where I want these pages to evolve. So I want to change it to "guides" In a world without worrying about google, I would simply change the parent page to guides, so they look like this, and be done with it: mysite.com/guides/personal-widgets But, the obvious problem is that I have external links to the page now. And the pages have a nice PR. And they also have Facebook page Likes and I don't know if I'll lose those. I know that if I should do this I should redirect the pages to the new pages of course. My question is: Will redirecting the old URL to the new URL with a 301 cause anything negative to happen that I might not be expecting? Does Google dislike Redirects for any reason, or understand they are sometimes necessary?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Trailing Slash: Lost in Redirection?
Question here, but first the lead in. As you all know, 301 redirects don't pass on 100% of link juice. I've set up my site using htaccess to redirect all non-ww to www and redirect all URLs to have a trailing slash. FYI, the preferred domain is selected in WMT and canonical URLs appear in the head section of all pages. So now what happens when sites that link to mine don't include either the www or the trailing slash, which is actually quite common? Of course, asking the site own to correct the link is ideal, but that's not always possible. So if thousands of links on external sites are linking to http://www.site.com instead of http://www.site.com/, won't lots of link juice get lost in redirection? I can't think of anything more I can do to the URLs to reduce duplicate content and juice dilution. Thoughts? Kevin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kwoolf0 -
How To 301 Redirect .html pages
I need to redirect a page/URL that is purely .html to a new location. I don't know how to do this. All the redirects I can find are for server side code pages .php/.aspx etc. From my understanding I can't put a server side redirect in a .html file. I am hosting on a microsoft server, however the new page I am redirecting to is .php. I am running some WordPress (.php) files on the server. I need to make it redirect before the old page loads so visitors don't start reading something that is about to get redirected Can someone please help me?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyNet0 -
Cookies and redirects - what are the negative effects?
I am advising a client who wants to streamline their online customers experience through the use of cookies. The first time someone visits mysite.com, they will visit the normal index page, and on that page will be asked to identify themselves as a Personal or Business customer - and taken through to a relevant page. This will result in a cookie being added. The next time they come back to mysite.com, the cookie will automatically direct them from the index page to mysite.com/personal/ or mysite.com/business/. My question is, what are the SEO implications of this, especially given the fact the index page is their primary landing page for almost all organic traffic? Bots I realise that googlebot etc do not store cookies, so this should result in no change from the bots perspective (i.e. no redirect) but is it that simple? In effect we'll be showing the bot one thing and second time + visitors something else. Is this not effectively cloaking? All advice gratefully received!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomasters0