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
-
I have a metadata issue. My site crawl is coming back with missing descriptions, but all of the pages look like site tags (i.e. /blog/?_sft_tag=call-routing)
I have a metadata issue. My site crawl is coming back with missing descriptions, but all of the pages look like site tags (i.e. /blog/?_sft_tag=call-routing)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amarieyoussef0 -
302 > 302 > 301 Redirect Chain Issue & Advice
Hi everyone, I recently relaunched our website and everything went well. However, while checking site health, I found a new redirect chain issue (302 > 302 > 301 > 200) when the user requests the HTTP and non-www version of our URL. Here's what's happening: • 302 #1 -- http://domain.com/example/ 302 redirects to http://domain.com/PnVKV/example/ (the 5 characters in the appended "subfolder" are dynamic and change each time)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew_In_Search_of_Answers
• 302 #2 -- http://domain.com/PnVKV/example/ 302 redirects BACK to http://domain.com/example/
• 301 #1 -- http://domain.com/example/ 301 redirects to https://www.domain.com/example/ (as it should have done originally)
• 200 -- https://www.domain.com/example/ resolves properly We're hosted on AWS, and one of my cloud architects investigated and reported GoDaddy was causing the two 302s. That's backed up online by posts like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46307518/random-5-alpha-character-path-appended-to-requests and https://www.godaddy.com/community/Managing-Domains/My-domain-name-not-resolving-correctly-6-random-characters-are/td-p/60782. I reached out to GoDaddy today, expecting them to say it wasn't a problem on their end, but they actually confirmed this was a known bug (as of September 2017) but there is no timeline for a fix. I asked the first rep I spoke with on the phone to send a summary, and here's what he provided in his own words: From the information gathered on my end and I was able to get from our advanced tech support team, the redirect issue is in a bug report and many examples have been logged with the help of customers, but no log will be made in this case due to the destination URL being met. Most issues being logged are site not resolving properly or resolving errors. I realize the redirect can cause SEO issues with the additional redirects occurring. Also no ETA has been logged for the issue being reported. I do feel for you since I now understand more the SEO issues it can cause. I myself will keep an eye out for the bug report and see if any progress is being made any info outside of this I will email you directly. Thanks. Issue being Experienced: Domains that are set to Go Daddy forwarding IPs may sometimes resolve to a url that has extra characters appended to the end of them. Example: domain1.com forwards to http://www.domain2.com/TLYEZ. However it should just forward to http://www.domain2.com. I think this answers what some Moz users may have been experiencing sporadically, especially this previous thread: https://moz.com/community/q/forwarded-vanity-domains-suddenly-resolving-to-404-with-appended-url-s-ending-in-random-5-characters. My question: Given everything stated above and what we know about the impact of redirect chains on SEO, how severe should I rate this? I told my Director that I would recommend we move away from GoDaddy (something I don't want to do, but feel we _**have **_to do), but she viewed it as just another technical SEO issue and one that didn't necessarily need to be prioritized over others related to the relaunch. How would you respond in my shoes? On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the biggest), how big of a technical SEO is this? Would you make it a priority? At the very least, I thought the Moz community would benefit from the GoDaddy confirmation of this issue and knowing about the lack of an ETA on a fix. Thanks!0 -
Using a US CDN (Cloudflare) for a UK Site. Should I use a UK Based CDN as it says my server is based in USA
Hi All, We are a UK Company with Uk customers only and use CloudFlare CND. Our Site is hosted by a UK company with servers here but from looking online and checking where my site is hosted etc etc , some sites are telling me the name of our UK Hosted company and other sites are telling me my site is hosted in San Fran (USA) , where I presume the Cloudflare is based. I know Cloudflare has a couple of servers in the UK it uses but given all my customers are UK based ,I don't want this is affect rankings etc , as I thought it was a ranking benefit to be hosted in the country you are based. Is there any issue with this and should I change or is google clever enough to know so i shouldn't worry. thanks Pet
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Danger in using utm_source and utm_medium to track tens of thousands of cross domain redirects
We just merged with another company and are redirecting their domains (competitive/similar content) to our own. We'll have several domains, redirecting (301) several hundred thousand URL's to our domain (not all the same page, very unique mappings). Will adding utm_source, et al parameters to the URL's have a negative impact on how google transfers value to the pages based on the redirect authority passed? Any points of view? We have a self referencing canonical, but given that we have 90 million pages on the current domain (and climbing), seems like cleanest approach would be to not use redirects. Thanks, Jeff
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jrjames830 -
How should we 301 redirecting ecommerce microsite to our larger ecommmerce site? Should we?
We have several microsites (by microsite I mean sites that are basically top-level departments of our main ecommerce site. We continue to run these, without much support, and they do generate a few sales but we simply don't have the resources to grow them or manage them effectively. We have "kicked around" the idea of 301 redirecting them to our main ecommerce site with the idea that any additional SEO value would be greater than the few sales they currently generate. All products that are on our microsites can be found on our main ecommerce site, thus we can redirect products on our microsites to the exact product on our main site. How would you treat these sites? Would you 301 redirect them? If so, how would you do it? What would be some considerations if we decide to 301 redirect? Microsite example: http://www.drinkingstuff.com/ Main site: http://www.prankplace.com/ I would greatly appreciate any tidbits the community could provide us on this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Istoresinc0 -
Mobile Site Outranking Main Site
Hi, We have recently been hit with a problem regarding our mobile site, where it is outranking our main site. This is causing a drop in orders and ranknings for our main site. It would appear that google has indexed our mobile site and so the two are now competing against each other. Our main site is on a .co.uk and our mobile site on a .mobi, but we have now taken down the mobile site until we get this sorted. Does anyone else have any experience of this happening and how to stop it happening again? Thanks Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Steve251 -
Homepage 302 Redirect For SSL
Hi All, My site, http://domain.com, currently has a 302 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com. The reason we have an SSL cert is because we have a registration and log in form on the homepage (as well as log in options in the top bar of every page on the site - email/password). My question is: When taking SEO best practices into account, would we be better having a 301 redirect from http://domain.com to https://domain.com as most of our inbound links are directed to http://domain.com. Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rogs.SEO0 -
In mobile searches, does Google recognize HTML5 sites as mobile sites?
Does Google recognize HTML5 sites using responsive design as mobile sites? I know that for mobile searches, Google promotes results on mobile sites. I'm trying to determine if my site, created in HTML5 with responsive design falls into that category. Any insights on the topic would be very helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BostonWright0