Ugly Redirect Chain
-
Hey everyone,
Hoping to get your take on this:
- We have some very high demand products, they usually sell out in minutes (lucky us, eh?!)
- We are implementing a queue function on a product page - basically if too many people try to check out at the same time, we dump them in a queue
- The queue could kick in before or after search engines have indexed the product page
- The product page has markup and on-page content relating to the product.
- The queue page exists on an external (yes, external) site
- The queue page will not have any of the product info, markup, or optimised page title
- Product page will 302 to queue page and starts a series of 302 redirects!
Here's the sequence when queue is active:
- CANONICAL product page (with markup, on-page product info, optimised page title, etc.)
>> 302 >> - queue page on external domain (ZERO markup, product info or page title)
>>302>> - same queue page, but throwing a hashed queue ID into the URL (basically giving you your place in the queue)
HELD IN QUEUE FOR A FEW MINUTES
**>> 302> ** - NON-CANONICAL product page (with markup, on-page product info, optimised page title, etc.)
I can foresee two scenarios
- search engine has indexed product page prior to queue kicking in. Then queue kicks in 302ing search engine to queue page. because it's a 302 the crappy queue page content is indexed back to the originating product page. This causes search engines to drop the product page cos all the product-specific markup/content has been overwritten with crappy queue page content
- search engines don't manage to index product page before queue kicks in. They crawl product page URL, get 302 to queue page, index crappy queue page content and think the product page is crappy, so don't traffic it. They will recrawl the product page once the queue's turned off, only to discover the product has sold out - boo.
I very much doubt the search engines will 'wait for a few minutes' so may never end up reaching the product page again.
I'm trying to get the markup/product info and optimised meta data injected into the queue page, so that remains present at all points on the journey in the hope that this enables search engines to continue to rank and traffic the product page.
What's your take on this?
Any suggestions on how we might overcome the issues? (before you ask; avoiding using the queue system is impossible, sorry!)
Thanks!
-
Thanks for taking the time to answer. Agreed. It's confusing at best. It confused the heck out of me when I was deconstructing the behaviour.
We generally get indexed faster than 2-3 days. Last time I checked the average time to index was around 40 minutes. Guess that's because the engines know our content changes frequently.
_1- If the products on your site are selling within minutes, then why are you focusing your attention on how Google will index them? _Most of our purchasing customers come via Natural Search.
2- As the products sell out within minutes and after so the redirection is stopped, then why would that affect how Google ranks your site? I should have been clearer: t****he queue will trigger after a threshold is reached, not when product is sold out. But if it's a particularly high demand product, it could sell out before threshold dips below that configured for the queue.
Good suggestion about opening queue in a tab.I will explore that option.
-
To be honest, I am a bit lost in the explanation of your external redirect chain, but I would like to add:
1- If the products on your site are selling within minutes, then why are you focusing your attention on how Google will index them?
2- As the products sell out within minutes and after so the redirection is stopped, then why would that affect how Google ranks your site?
Google doesn't instantly crawl and index your page as soon as it is created. From past experience, I can say that it can take 2-3 days for Google to index new articles, and that would be more than enough time for your products to sell out and for the redirect chain to be stopped.
An alternative solution would be so that when the user first gets to the site and clicks the "purchase" button, you don't just redirect him to the queue page, but open the queue page on a new tab. That way it won't count as a redirect but simply as a link from your site to the redirect site.
Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com
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
-
Redirect Issue - Drop in ranking after CMS change
Hi Website - https://www.aasprint.com.au/ After we moved the site from wordpress to codeIgniter + angular there has been a huge drop in traffic and ranking. One of the thing we recently realized is the redirection - COULD THAT BE THE ISSUE? On the browser and sitemap the URL doesn't have "/" at the end When checked on redirection tool the URL seems to be redirecting to one with "/" at the end Attached are the screenshots. Also moz bar shows no redirection. However, the issue seems to be flagged by the site audit tool as 301 redirection. Not sure if it's the cause for the drop. What action to take? Any advice would be much appreciated. V7CNtqt j3dJ4TW
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bhisshaun0 -
Does removal of internal redirects(301) help in SEO
I am planning to completely remove 301 redirects manually by replacing such links with actual live pages/links. So there will be no redirects internally in the website. Will this boost our SEO efforts? Auto redirects will be there for incoming links to non-existing pages. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Redirecting old mobile site
Hi All, Trying to figure out the best option here. I have a website that used to utilize a separate mobile site (m.xyz.com) but now utilizes responsive design. What is the best way to deal with that old mobile site? De-index? 301 redirect back to the main site in the rare case someone finds the m. site somewhere? THanks! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Lost all ranking after site-wide 301 redirect
Hi all I did a complete site-wide 310 redirect about 3 weeks ago for a site that had consistently been in Pos 1-5 for my targeted keyword ("low glycemic foods"). I changed the domain from low-glycemic-foods-org to low-glycemic-diet.com because I thought that was a more appropriate title and thru my readings I believed that if I carefully followed the recommended procedures I would quickly regain my SERP. Webmaster tools is showing that I have over 800 inbound links - many from very trustworthy sources including .edu, etc BUT my home page is nowhere to be found for the keyword search "low glycemic diet". My Seomoz onpage SEO score is an "A" Any enlightenment would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | veezer0 -
Redirect or Rewrite? 2 pages ranking
We have two pages ranking for "Custom Web Design" http://www.imageworksstudio.com/custom-web-design ranks higher (consistently 9-13) and http://www.imageworksstudio.com/content/custom-web-design ranks around 35-40 the latter is actually an older version of the article that never was replaced or taken down - but it has the majority of the links to it Wondering if we should update the old content so it is not similar to the one that is ranking better or if we should redirect everything to /custom-web-design to see if it can secure better rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imageworks-2612900 -
Are there any negatives to channeling my links through a 301 redirect?
I'm channeling 1000's of links through another url with a 301 redirect. I've thought this through and can't see any downside to doing this, but I want to get your opinion. Can you see any downside to doing this? With regards to passing anchor text, PR, PA, etc? Since this is done with sites all the time when they change urls, I can't see Google being able to penalize me for this....can you? What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brian-M0 -
Redirect Help - Domain Change and Website Redesign
Hi there, I've redesigned a website for a client, but we are also changing domains and I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up the redirects from their old domain to the new one. 95% of their search engine traffic originally came through brand related keywords that landed on their homepage, and most of the remaining 15% landed on 3 other pages. The new site has pages to replace these 3 main SEO pages, and I'm about to set 301 redirects from their old domain, but I can't figure out the quickest/best way to do it. Is it possible to set up a specific redirect for the 4 main pages (Home + plus the 3 others) then a "catch all" type of thing for the rest of the pages, that redirect either to the homepage, or some sort of "Check out our new Site" landing page. How do you do this, or is there a better way to set it up? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timscullin0 -
Does having many 302 redirects on a site hurt rankings?
I am working with an affiliate website which has many product listings but the "Buy Now" button on each product listing is an external link (affiliate link) to the appropriate product page on the actual website where the product can be bought. Each of these external links passes through an internal redirect, which is implemented as a 302. Consequently, when SEOmoz crawls that site, it gives me a warning that there are hundreds of 302 redirects on the site. Do you think this will hurt the site's potential to rank? Should I remove the redirects and leave them as direct links to the external site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexFusman0