Infinite 302 redirects on a site using Angular JS
-
I'm not quite sure what I'm seeing here. It's a site that uses Angular JS (version 1) and the crawl is showing infinite 302 redirects, but the redirects are all to the same URL?
Here's an example: https://www.razoo.com/us/story/Armco-Park-Foundation
Has anyone seen this before? What causes it and how do I counsel the client on how to fix it?
-
Indeed: thanks for the update. AngularJS is a great technique but relatively new and so much different from the techniques we've gotten used to working with in the past couple of years that this is an interesting case.
Good luck with the project and cool to see more people using AngularJS!
-
Thank you so much for following up, Katherine!
We really appreciate it.
-
The pages are definitely 302 redirecting 10+ times - shown in both the Deepcrawl and Screaming Frog data, but not in the tools l like redirect checker. The redirects showed up in Screaming Frog and Deepcrawl.
I got my answer from Nicholas Chimonas who is on the Online Geniuses slack group and I've posted his response below.
-
Google Fetch & Render won't work as the site wasn't set up properly. And I got the data from Deepcrawl AND Screaming Frog, but that didn't help me with the why.
Nicolas Chimonas actually helped me figure it out and posted the answer on the Online Geniuses Slack group as well as the Tech SEO Google+ community, and here it is for all who are curious:
Nicholas ChimonasJun 7, 2016<a data-content="Figured%20I'd%20post%20my%20thoughts%20for%20the%20community%20here%20that%20I%20brought%20up%20in%20the%20Online%20Geniuses%20slack.%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3EAngular%20is%20throwing%20a%20wrench%20in%20the%20works%2C%20I'm%20not%20sure%20cloaking%20is%20really%20the%20intent%20here%20%3Cspan%20class%3D%22proflinkWrapper%22%3E%3Cspan%20class%3D%22proflinkPrefix%22%3E%2B%3C%2Fspan%3E%3Ca%20class%3D%22proflink%20aaTEdf%22%20href%3D%22%2F117530250543183103093%22%20oid%3D%22117530250543183103093%22%3ERick%20Bucich%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fspan%3E%26nbsp%3Byou'll%20notice%20the%20differences%20in%20code%20when%20you%20view-source%20versus%20inspect%20element%20with%20chrome%20dev%20tools.%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3EExcerpt%20taken%20from%20%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fipullrank.com%2F6-things-you-should-know-about-in-chrome-devtools%2F%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttp%3A%2F%2Fipullrank.com%2F6-things-you-should-know-about-in-chrome-devtools%2F%3C%2Fa%3E%20%3A%3Cbr%3E%22First%20things%20first%2C%20View%20Source%2C%20we%E2%80%99ve%20had%20great%20times%20together%2C%20but%20it%E2%80%99s%20over.%20In%20the%20post-JavaScript%20age%2C%20there%20is%20little%20value%20in%20looking%20at%20the%20pure%20source%20code%20of%20a%20page%20before%20its%20JavaScript%20transformations.%20In%20fact%2C%20due%20to%20Google%E2%80%99s%20vast%20improvements%20in%20crawling%2C%20this%20is%20a%20fundamental%20flaw%20of%20all%20SEO%20crawling%20tools%20in%20that%20crawlers%20are%20not%20seeing%20the%20code%20as%20the%20user%20or%20Google%20sees%20it.%20Rather%2C%20SEO%20tools%20are%20seeing%20the%20code%20as%20it%E2%80%99s%20downloaded%20and%20not%20as%20it%E2%80%99s%20rendered.%20Granted%2C%20crawling%20with%20headless%20browsers%20is%20both%20slower%20and%20far%20more%20computationally%20expensive%2C%20but%20it%E2%80%99s%20also%20just%20a%20requirement%20at%20this%20point%20given%20the%20adoption%20rate%20of%20JavaScript%20frameworks.%20If%20you%E2%80%99re%20not%20using%20Inspect%20Element%20to%20review%20code%2C%20you%20are%20likely%20missing%20a%20big%20part%20of%20the%20picture.%22%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3ESo..%20with%20that%20in%20mind%2C%20I%20also%20went%20the%20route%20of%20investigating%20the%20page%20with%20different%20user-agents.%20By%20the%20way%2C%20Katherine%20fetched%20the%20URL%20as%20Googlebot%20and%20was%20served%20a%20302%20redirect%20in%20WMT.%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3EThis%20is%20the%20URL%20as%20Googlebot%20sees%20it%2C%20as%20mentioned%20totally%20different%20outline%2C%20and%20text%2C%20and%20links%20on%20the%20page.%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FqQ4kwm2.png%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttp%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FqQ4kwm2.png%3C%2Fa%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3EBoth%20of%20these%20red%20boxes%20in%20this%20image%20are%20links%20to%20%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%3C%2Fa%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3EWhich%20resolves%20when%20browsing%20as%20Googlebot.%20Notice%20the%20lack%20of%20%2Fus%2F%20prior%20to%20%2Fstory%2F%2C%20navigate%20to%20the%20above%20URL%20and%20you'll%20be%20302%20redirected%20to%20the%20%2Fus%2F%20URL.%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3EVersus%20when%20I'm%20in%20chrome%2C%20%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%3C%2Fa%3E%20is%20a%20302%20redirect%20to%20%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fus%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fus%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%3C%2Fa%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Flw9ta0R.png%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttp%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2Flw9ta0R.png%3C%2Fa%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3ESo%20that's%20where%20your%20redirect%20loop%20is%20coming%20from.%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3EThose%20links%20to%20%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%3C%2Fa%3E%20which%20are%20highlighted%20in%20red%20boxes%20only%20appear%20for%20Googlebot%2C%20they%20don't%20appear%20on%20the%20human%20browser%2C%20or%20the%20screaming%20frog%20without%20being%20headless%20and%20spoofed%20as%20Googlebot%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3ESo%20when%20Googlebot%20is%20served%20up%20a%20version%20of%20the%20page%20which%20302%20redirects%20them%20from%20%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%3C%2Fa%3E%20to%20%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fus%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fus%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%3C%2Fa%3E%20they%20instead%20are%20once%20again%20served%20%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%3C%2Fa%3E%20because%20the%20user-agent%20is%20Googlebot%2C%20which%20once%20again%20302%20redirects%20them%20to%20%3Ca%20rel%3D%22nofollow%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%20href%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fus%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%22%20class%3D%22ot-anchor%20aaTEdf%22%20jslog%3D%2210929%3B%20track%3Aclick%22%20dir%3D%22ltr%22%3Ehttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.razoo.com%2Fus%2Fstory%2FArmco-Park-Foundation%3C%2Fa%3E%20etc.%20ad%20infinitum%EF%BB%BF" data-profiledetails="%7B%22profileId%22%3A%22104133087852424173047%22%2C%22realName%22%3A%22Nicholas%20Chimonas%22%7D">Share</a>Figured I'd post my thoughts for the community here that I brought up in the Online Geniuses slack.
Angular is throwing a wrench in the works, I'm not sure cloaking is really the intent here +Rick Bucich you'll notice the differences in code when you view-source versus inspect element with chrome dev tools.
Excerpt taken from http://ipullrank.com/6-things-you-should-know-about-in-chrome-devtools/ :
"First things first, View Source, we’ve had great times together, but it’s over. In the post-JavaScript age, there is little value in looking at the pure source code of a page before its JavaScript transformations. In fact, due to Google’s vast improvements in crawling, this is a fundamental flaw of all SEO crawling tools in that crawlers are not seeing the code as the user or Google sees it. Rather, SEO tools are seeing the code as it’s downloaded and not as it’s rendered. Granted, crawling with headless browsers is both slower and far more computationally expensive, but it’s also just a requirement at this point given the adoption rate of JavaScript frameworks. If you’re not using Inspect Element to review code, you are likely missing a big part of the picture."So.. with that in mind, I also went the route of investigating the page with different user-agents. By the way, Katherine fetched the URL as Googlebot and was served a 302 redirect in WMT.
This is the URL as Googlebot sees it, as mentioned totally different outline, and text, and links on the page.
http://i.imgur.com/qQ4kwm2.png
Both of these red boxes in this image are links to https://www.razoo.com/story/Armco-Park-Foundation
Which resolves when browsing as Googlebot. Notice the lack of /us/ prior to /story/, navigate to the above URL and you'll be 302 redirected to the /us/ URL.
Versus when I'm in chrome, https://www.razoo.com/story/Armco-Park-Foundation is a 302 redirect tohttps://www.razoo.com/us/story/Armco-Park-Foundation
http://i.imgur.com/lw9ta0R.png
So that's where your redirect loop is coming from.
Those links to https://www.razoo.com/story/Armco-Park-Foundation which are highlighted in red boxes only appear for Googlebot, they don't appear on the human browser, or the screaming frog without being headless and spoofed as Googlebot
So when Googlebot is served up a version of the page which 302 redirects them fromhttps://www.razoo.com/story/Armco-Park-Foundation to https://www.razoo.com/us/story/Armco-Park-Foundation they instead are once again served https://www.razoo.com/story/Armco-Park-Foundation because the user-agent is Googlebot, which once again 302 redirects them to https://www.razoo.com/us/story/Armco-Park-Foundation etc. ad infinitum
-
Sounds like Deepcrawl, Screaming Frog, and Google Fetch & Render.
-
Hi Katherine,
Hmm difficult to answer that question since we don't know the techniques you are using on this site. Apart from AngularJS.
This site show me a 200-header code. Which is an indication that everything is OK.
http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php
What site gave you the 302-header code? One of MOZ's tools?
Bas
-
I should clarify that I'm seeing the redirect chain in Deepcrawl and Screaming Frog, and via Google's fetch and render tool inside Google Search Console.
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
-
Subdirectory site / 301 Redirects / Google Search Console
Hi There, I'm a web developer working on an existing WordPress site (Site #1) that has 900 blog posts accessible from this URL structure: www.site-1.com/title-of-the-post We've built a new website for their content (Site #2) and programmatically moved all blog posts to the second website. Here is the URL structure: www.site-1.com/site-2/title-of-the-post Site #1 will remain as a normal company site without a blog, and Site #2 will act as an online content membership platform. The original 900 posts have great link juice that we, of course, would like to maintain. We've already set up 301 redirects that take care of this process. (ie. the original post gets redirected to the same URL slug with '/site-2/' added. My questions: Do you have a recommendation about how to best handle this second website in Google Search Console? Do we submit this second website as an additional property in GSC? (which shares the same top-level-domain as the original) Currently, the sitemap.xml submitted to Google Search Console has all 900 blog posts with the old URLs. Is there any benefit / drawback to submitting another sitemap.xml from the new website which has all the same blog posts at the new URL. Your guidance is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HimalayanInstitute0 -
Splitting One Site Into Two Sites Best Practices Needed
Okay, working with a large site that, for business reasons beyond organic search, wants to split an existing site in two. So, the old domain name stays and a new one is born with some of the content from the old site, along with some new content of its own. The general idea, for more than just search reasons, is that it makes both the old site and new sites more purely about their respective subject matter. The existing content on the old site that is becoming part of the new site will be 301'd to the new site's domain. So, the old site will have a lot of 301s and links to the new site. No links coming back from the new site to the old site anticipated at this time. Would like any and all insights into any potential pitfalls and best practices for this to come off as well as it can under the circumstances. For instance, should all those links from the old site to the new site be nofollowed, kind of like a non-editorial link to an affiliate or advertiser? Is there weirdness for Google in 301ing to a new domain from some, but not all, content of the old site. Would you individually submit requests to remove from index for the hundreds and hundreds of old site pages moving to the new site or just figure that the 301 will eventually take care of that? Is there substantial organic search risk of any kind to the old site, beyond the obvious of just not having those pages to produce any more? Anything else? Any ideas about how long the new site can expect to wander the wilderness of no organic search traffic? The old site has a 45 domain authority. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Old site penalised, we moved: Shall we cut loose from the old site. It's curently 301 to new site.
Hi, We had a site with many bad links pointing to it (.co.uk). It was knocked from the SERPS. We tried to manually ask webmasters to remove links.Then submitted a Disavow and a recon request. We have since moved the site to a new URL (.com) about a year ago. As the company needed it's customer to find them still. We 301 redirected the .co.uk to the .com There are still lots of bad links pointing to the .co.uk. The questions are: #1 Do we stop the 301 redirect from .co.uk to .com now? The .co.uk is not showing in the rankings. We could have a basic holding page on the .co.uk with 'we have moved' (No link). Or just switch it off. #2 If we keep the .co.uk 301 to the .com, shall we upload disavow to .com webmasters tools or .co.uk webmasters tools. I ask this because someone else had uploaded the .co.uk's disavow list of spam links to the .com webmasters tools. Is this bad? Thanks in advance for any advise or insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Shall I use a 301 or 302 redirect when people leave the company?
Hello, At my company, we have instances where client-facing people leave the company and so we need to remove their profile page from the website. As opposed to people receiving a 404 when they search for them, I thought it would be best to divert visitors to a generic landing page to explain that the person they are looking for has left the company with details on how to get in touch. I'm tempted to use a 302 redirect so the person they are searching for stays in the search results longer. But longer-term, will this cause any harm? Should it be eventually be turned into a 301 redirect? Or should I just use a 301 in the first instance. Thanks in advance, Stu
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stuart260 -
What to do about old urls that don't logically 301 redirect to current site?
Mozzers, I have changed my site url structure several times. As a result, I now have a lot of old URLs that don't really logically redirect to anything in the current site. I started out 404-ing them, but it seemed like Google was penalizing my crawl rate AND it wasn't removing them from the index after being crawled several times. There are way too many (>100k) to use the URL removal tool even at a directory level. So instead I took some advice and changed them to 200, but with a "noindex" meta tag and set them to not render any content. I get less errors but I now have a lot of pages that do this. Should I (a) just 404 them and wait for Google to remove (b) keep the 200, noindex or (c) are there other things I can do? 410 maybe? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
Why are these sites outranking me?
I am trying to rank for the phrase "a link between worlds walkthrough" I am on page 1 but there are several results that just outranks me and I cannot see any reason that they would be doing so. My site is hiddentriforce.com/a-link-between-worlds/walkthrough/ For that page I have 5 linking domains, varied anchor text that spans from things like "here" to a variety of related phrases. All of the links come from really good sites My page has 1400 likes, 90 shares, and about 20 each in tweets and +'s DA of 44 PA of 37 The 4 and 5 ranked sites both have WAY less social interactions, lower PA and DA, less links, etc Yet they outrank me why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
How to do a site migration followed by a domain migration and avoid 301 redirect chains?
Hi all, The current roadmap for our Eng team has us performing a site migration (redirecting one subfolder to another subfolder) and then a domain migration shortly after. The way I see it, I have 2 scenarios (the 1st involves the site migration THEN the domain migration and the 2nd is the site migration and domain migration being done simultaneously): olddomain.com/subfolder-old to olddomain.com/subfolder-new THEN olddomain.com/subfolder-new to newdomain.com/subfolder-new AND olddomain.com/subfolder-old to newdomain.com/subfolder-new olddomain.com/subfolder-old to newdomain.com/subfolder-new I also understand that there are two best practices for a domain migration and they are 1) keep everything the same that you can to help Google understand it is the same page, just on a different domain and 2) avoid chain redirects. As you can imagine, scenario 1 requires more Eng costs than scenario 2. So, my question is, is scenario 2 a perfectly viable option or should I make the push to go for scenario 1? Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brad-causes1 -
Duplicate content: is it possible to write a page, delete it and use it for a different site?
Hi, I've a simple question. Some time ago I built a site and added pages to it. I have found out that the site was penalized by Google and I have neglected it. The problem is that I had written well-optimized pages on that site, which I would like to use on another website. Thus, my question is: if I delete a page I had written on site 1, can use it on page 2 without being penalized by Google due to duplicate content? Please note: site one would still be online. I will simply delete some pages and use them on site 2. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0