Google sees redirect when there isn't any?
-
I've posted a question previously regarding the very strange changes in our search positions here http://www.seomoz.org/q/different-pages-ranking-for-search-terms-often-irrelevant
New strange thing I've noticed - and very disturbing thing - seems like Google has somehow glued two pages together. Or, in other words, looks like Google sees a 301 redirect from one page to another.
This, actually, happened to several pages, I'll illustrate it with our Flash templates page.
URL: http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php
Has been #3 for 'Flash templates' in Google.Reasons why it looks like redirect:
Reason #1
Now this http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php page is ranking instead of http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php
Also, http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php is not in the index.
That what would typically happen if you had 301 from Flash templates to logo templates page.Reason #2
If you search for cache:http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php Google will give the cahced version of http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php!!!
If you search for info:www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php you again get info on http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php instead!Reason #3
In Google Webmaster Tools when I look for the external links to http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php I see all the links from different sites, which actually point to http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php listed as "Via this intermediate link: http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php" As I understand Google makes this "via intermediate link" when there's a redirect? That way, currently Google thinks that all the external links we have for Flash templates are actually pointing to Logo templates?The point is we NEVER had any kind of redirect from http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php to http://www.templatemonster.com/logo-templates.php
I've seen several similar situations on Google Help forums but they were never resolved.
So, I wonder if anybody can explain how that could have happened, and what can be done to solve that problem?
-
Funny, we had that self-pointing canonical tag since July 8th - just removed it less than a day ago as we thought it might be harmful. So, that means that it didn't help as it was there all the time.
-
It is perfectly standard for the "real" page to show a canonical to itself. For example, look at the code for this Q&A question. It has a canonical tag pointing to itself.
A loop would be created only if you made an error. If you set the canonical for Page A as B, then you set the canonical for Page B as A, then you would have created a loop which should be fixed. If you designate the canonical for Page A as B, and the canonical for Page B as B, that would be perfectly valid.
In summary, yes I am suggesting that all pages involving /flash-templates.php including the page itself should use the canonical tag. At the very least add it to both the flash-templates.php page and the logo-templates.php page, each pointing to themselves.
-
Actually, we do use canonical on pages with parameters such as this one:
http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php?aff=affiliate
or this
http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php?from=2&type=9Do you suggest that we place canonical on the page itself, won't it create some kind of infinite loop? If http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php refers to itself as canonical?
-
I noticed you still have not added the canonical tag to your pages. If you do not wish to add them to all the pages in your site would you consider at least adding it to a couple of your affected pages to see if there is any impact?
You wont notice any difference until the pages are crawled again, but if you don't make any change at all this issue may remain.
I would also suggest your site requires a higher level of security then most e-commerce sites. Your audience and customers are often developers with various levels of experience. Any unhappy customer or developer will often have at least some knowledge related to website security, not to mention your competitors.
If you use a solid backup system you can compare the files from your current site with the files from a backup taken in June to see if you have any infected files.
-
Can you determine whether this is happening to any other pages right now?
Whenever we see this type of thing, we look at the development schedule to see which dev changes have recently been implemented. As everyone else has noted, I don't see anything out of place either but sometimes it's easier to look at specific recent dev changes.
Has the page been crawled since last cache? If not, maybe it would be a good idea to 'help' google crawl it a little more quickly to see if things get resolved.
-
A few other points.
site:templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php
Doesn't show anything, (except the few items which you have blocked by robots.txt, so that is normal) which leads me to believe you had an issue as Ryan said on July 19th. Luckily they kept you in the results for "Flash templates" even with a different page.
I would also advise to add descriptions to all pages at the same time you are adding canonicals. Why does the 'Problem' page flash-templates.php not have a description tag? Perhaps a coding issue that is causing this issue as well?
-
I have looked at your page header codes, anchor links, html code on both pages along with the robots.txt for your site. There is no apparent reason for this issue.
The google cache URL for your logo-templates page is: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates.php
Your Google cache is clearly displaying the wrong page as it appeared on July 19th.
You have two options. You can do nothing and see if the issue resolves itself after the next Google update. Another choice, which I would recommend, is to add the canonical tag to all your pages. The canonical tag is helpful for numerous reasons. I add the tag to every page. That tag should clear up any confusion that occurred.
-
P.S. have you tried using the Fetch as Googlebot tool in WMT?
-
So you are certain that you never had any type of redirect or canonical tag that might account for this. Hmmm, this looks weird.
After looking at this issue and your previous question, I'm stumped. I don't see any redirects, canonicals, etc that could cause this. My best suggestion is to try to get the ear of someone at Google (maybe try Matt Cutts?).
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
-
All urls seem to exist (no 404 errors) but they don't.
Hello I am doing a SEO auditing for a website which only has a few pages. I have no cPanel credentials, no FTP no Wordpress admin account, just watching it from the outside. The site works, the Moz crawler didn't report any problem, I can reach every page from the menu. The problem is that - except for the few actual pages - no matter what you type after the domain name, you always reach the home page and don't get any 404 error. I.E. Http://domain.com/oiuxyxyzbpoyob/ (there is no such a page, but i don't get 404 error, the home is displayed and the url in the browser remains Http://domain.com/oiubpoyob/, so it's not a 301 redirect). Http://domain.com/WhatEverYouType/ (same) Could this be an important SEO issue (i.e. resulting in infinite amount of duplicate content pages )? Do you think I should require the owner to prevent this from happening? Should I look into the .htaccess file to fix it ? Thank you Mozers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoMiSoL0 -
Google Search Console "Change of Address" - Failed Redirection Test
I have a client who has a lot of domain variations, which have all been set up in Google Search Console. I requested that the client use the COA feature in GSC for the domains that are now redirecting to other domains that they own (which are set up in GSC). The problem is that we're not redirecting the homepages to the homepages of the destination domains. So, GSC is giving us this error message: fails redirection test: The old site redirects to www.domain.com/blog, which does not correspond to the new site you chose. Is our only way to use GSC COA for these domains to change the homepage redirect to go to the homepage of the destination domain? We don't really want that since the domain we're redirecting is a "blog.domain1.com" subdomain and we want to redirect it to "domain2.com/blog". Any help appreciated! Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kernmedia
Dan0 -
Google's Stance on "Hidden" Content
Hi, I'm aware Google doesn't care if you have helpful content you can hide/unhide by user interaction. I am also aware that Google frowns upon hiding content from the user for SEO purposes. We're not considering anything similar to this. The issue is, we will be displaying only a part of our content to the user at a time. We'll load 3 results on each page initially. These first 3 results are static, meaning on each initial page load/refresh, the same 3 results will display. However, we'll have a "Show Next 3" button which replaces the initial results with the next 3 results. This content will be preloaded in the source code so Google will know about it. I feel like Google shouldn't have an issue with this since we're allowing the user action to cycle through all results. But I'm curious, is it an issue that the user action does NOT allow them to see all results on the page at once? I am leaning towards no, this doesn't matter, but would like some input if possible. Thanks a lot!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kirmeliux0 -
Why Doesn't Moz Use Wistia Backlink Embed Feature
I am using Wistia videos for my website and they have an embed feature which gives option to include a backlink to one's site, which I thought was great. I took a random Moz whiteboard Friday video (http://moz.com/blog/what-should-i-put-on-the-homepage-whiteboard-friday) and I do not see the backlink feature if I click on "embed" button below the video. Question: why would Moz not use such feature? Bad SEO or simply because Moz does not need it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Why won't my sub-domain blog rank for my brand name in Google?
For six months or so, my team and I have been trying to get our blog to rank on page one in Google for the term "Instabill." The URL, http://blog.instabill.com, is a sub-domain of our company website and they both use the same IP address. Three pages on our www.Instabill.com site rank in the top three spots when searching our brand name in Google. However, our blog ranks 100+. For our blog, we are currently using b2evolution and nginx. We have tried adding static content on the home page, static content in the sidebar, static content on an About Instabill page, and optimizing blog posts for the keyword Instabill, but nothing seems to work. We appreciate any advice you can provide to us. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Instabill
Meghan0 -
How to conduct catch 301 redirects & have the separate 301 redirects for the key pages
Hi, We've currently done a site migration mapping and 301 redirecting only the sites key pages. However two GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) is picking a massive amount of 404 areas and there has been some drop in rankings. I want to mitigate the site from further decline, and hence thought about doing a catch 301 - that is 301 redirecting the remaining pages found on the old site back to the home page, with the future aim of going through each URL one by one to redirect them to the page which is most relevant. Two questions, (1) can I do a catch 301 and if so what is the process and requirements that I have to give to the developer? (2) How do you reduce the number of increasing 404 errors from a site, despite doing 301 redirects and updating links on external linking sites. Note: The server is apache and the site is hosted on Wordpress platform. Regards, Vahe
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vahe.Arabian0 -
What's going on with my organic traffic from Google?
I am working on eCommerce website Vista Stores. My website's traffic is going down due to certain reason. I have done R & D and have assumption with auto generated content which I have added on few product pages. You can find out attachment to know more about current situation of traffic. 6789134845_d1a1578960_b.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Meeting Google's needs 100% with dynamic pages
We have bought into a really powerful search, very exciting We can define really detailed product based 'landing pages' by creating a search that pulles on required attributeseghttp://www.OURDOMAIN.com//search/index.php?sortprice=asc&followSearch=9673&q=red+coats+short-length Pop that in a link Short Red Coats on a previous page and wonderful, that gives a page of short red coats in price ascending order, one happy consumer, straight to a page that meets their needs Question 1 however unhappy Google right? Question 2 can we meet Google's needs 100% with a redirect permanent in an .htaccess file E.G redirect permanent /short-red-coats/ http://www.OURDOMAIN.com//search/index.php?sortprice=asc&followSearch=9673&q=red+coats+short-length
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeezerG
Many thanks
CB0