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.
301 Redirect "wildcard" question
-
I have been looking at the SEOmoz redirect guide for some advice but I can't seem to find the answer : http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
I have lots of URLs from a previous version of a site that look like the following:
etc etc.
I want to write a redirect so whenever a URL with the terms "-c-25.html" is requested it redirects to a specified page, regardless of what comes after the question mark.
These URLs were created by our previous ecommerce software. The 'c' is for category, and each page of the cateogry created a different URL. I want to do these so I can rediect all of these URLs to the appropraite new cateogry page in a single redirect.
Thanks for any help.
-
When I did a similar transition with hundreds of thousands of links. I created a database table with source and destination columns. Then a script that handles all 404 requests. If the requested link matches an entry in the source column, the user is sent a 301 to the matching destination entry. That allowed for easier maintenance than a huge htaccess file and the server load caused by te script should go down over time as 301 are saved and you contact site owners to update links. The other benefit is that you can do enhanced tracking to see what is request, found and not found and where those people came from.
-
An easy way is to use RedirectMatch, example:
RedirectMatch 301 /-c-25.html http://www.domain.com/new-category
Drop the above in a .htaccess file, test it works how you expect first
-
OK, If I make it the first redirect then the redirection works - regardless of what is written after the 'c-21.html'.
However the redirect is retaining the erroneous URL data after redirection. It is adding the '?blahblahblah" to the end of the new URL. I want it to dispose of this so all the redirects are routed to just one URL. How do I instruct it to not include this unwanted data in the new URL?
Thanks
-
Order matters in Rewrites. You will have to place that Rewrite Rule above the others.
-
I thought that may do it but still nothing. Maybe I am entering it wrong? Here is the code in .htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /test/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L
]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /test/index.php [L]
RewriteRule ^-c-21.html(.*)$ http://www.mysitename.com/test/category/t-shirts/dolphin_tshirts [R=301,L
]
The redirect just doesn't happen.
EDIT: If I write a standard redirect : Redirect 301 /test/-c-21.html then it will redirect to the desired page but it will retain the ?blahblah and add it to the new URL. I want it to work like this but discard the ?blahblahblah after redirecting.
-
If you need these to be 301 redirects...
RewriteRule ^-c-25.html(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/dolphin_tshirts [R=301,L]
-
Just to calrify I need a URL that has
/-c-25.html?blahblahblah
to change to:
/dolphin_tshirts
Regardless of that is written in the blahblahblah part.
-
I think that would probably work for him, assuming that the category IDs remain the same.
-
Would something liek this work:
RewriteRule ^-c-(.).html(.)$ category/$1.html$2 [R,NC]
I've not tested it, nor do I claim to be an expert, but I think it will work for what you're tryign to acheive - e.g. -c-25.html becomes category/25.html
-
If your site is in PHP, you could simply add the code...
$targetURL = "http://www.sitename.com/whatever-page-you-what";
if(stristr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],"-c-25.html")) {
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: $targetURL");
}
?>
If you don't have access to PHP, you could add a line like this to your HTACCESS file...
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} (c-25.html) [NC]
RewriteRule .* http://www.sitename.com/your-target-page [L,R=301]Someone might want to double check me on that rewriteRule above, though.
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
-
What is the difference between 301 redirects and backlinks?
i have seen some 301 redirects on my site billsonline, can anyone please explain the difference between backlinks and 301 redirects, i have read some articles where the writer was stating that 301 are not good for website.
Technical SEO | | aliho0 -
301 Redirect for multiple links
I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old
Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New
domain.com/urban
domain.com/urban/tempe
domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale0 -
Redirect URLS with 301 twice
Hello, I had asked my client to ask her web developer to move to a more simplified URL structure. There was a folder called "home" after the root which served no purpose. I asked for the URLs to be redirected using 301 to the new URLs which did not have this structure. However, the web developer didn't agree and decided to just rename the "home" folder "p". I don't know why he did this. We argued the case and he then created the URL structure we wanted. Initially he had 301 redirected the old URLS (the one with "Home") to his new version (the one with the "p"). When we asked for the more simplified URL after arguing, he just redirected all the "p" URLS to the PAGE NOT FOUND. However, remember, all the original URLs are now being redirected to the PAGE NOT FOUND as a result. The problems I see are these unless he redirects again: The new simplified URLS have to start from scratch to rank 2)We have duplicated content - two URLs with the same content Customers clicking products in the SERPs will currently find that they are being redirect to the 404 page. I understand that redirection has to occur but my questions are these: Is it ok to redirect twice with 301 - so old URL to the "p" version then to final simplified version. Will link juice be lost doing this twice? If he redirects from the original URLS to the final version missing out the "p" version, what should happen to the "p" version - they are currently indexed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
301 redirect relative or absolute path?
Hello everyone, Recently we've changed the URL structure on our website, and of course we had to 301 redirect the old urls to the coresponding new ones. The way the technical guys did this is: "http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "/new-url.html"
Technical SEO | | Silviu
meaning as a relative redirect path, not an absolute one like this:
"http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "http://www.domain.com/new-url.html" This happened for few thousands urls, and the fact is the organic traffic dropped for those pages after this change. (no other changes were made on these pages and the new urls are as seo friendly as possible, A grade on On-Page Grader). The question is: does the relative redirect negatively affects seo, or it counts the same as an absolute path redirect? Thanks,
S.0 -
Switching from a .org to .io (301 domain redirect)
I'm considering switching my main site from a .org to .io address; the .org is an exact match domain which helped to kickstart it a few years ago and now has about 50% repeat visitors, but was thrown off the Apple affiliation program for trademark infringement. I've found and purchased a nice (non-infringing) .io domain, and I've read the advice here on how to properly 301 the old domain; but my question is - does it matter that it's .io? Is this going to significantly hurt my rankings, even when everything has been 301'd properly? Another thought I had is that I may actually come out better off in the long run, what with Google penalties being applied to exact match domains. Is this a ranking suicide? If so, I'm tempted to leave it as is; even without the affiliation, it's making a good amount every month in ad fees that I don't want to disrupt. Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | w0lfiesmithUK0 -
How to create a delayed 301 redirect that still passes juice?
My company is merging one of our sites into another site. At first I was just going to create a 301 redirect from domainA.com to domainB.com but we decided that would be too confusing for customers expecting to see domainA.com so we want to create a page that says something like "We've moved. please visit domainB.com or be redirected after 10 seconds". My question is, how do I create a redirect that has a delay and will this still pass the same amount of juice that a regular 301 redirect would? I've heard that meta refreshes are considered spammy by Google.
Technical SEO | | bewoldt0 -
Delete 301 redirected pages from server after redirect is in place?
Should I remove the redirected old pages from my site after the redirects are in place? Google is hating the redirects and we have tanked. I did over 50 redirects this week, consolidating content and making one great page our of 3-10 pages with very little content per page. But the old pages are still visible to google's bot. Also, I have not put a rel canonical to itself on the new pages. Is that necessary? Thanks! Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0