Redirecting 301 Redirects -- Will Search Engines Notice?
-
Hello Mozzers,
We're currently evaluating a client site where the previous web developer redesigned the site and got lazy, 301 redirecting hundreds of pages to the home page instead of to their respective new URLs. Ugh.
In any case, we will probably fix this for the sake of implementing best practices. But I am curious how search engines treat 301'd URLs, as they are supposed to be permanent redirects. Will search crawlers ever visit the old URLs again to find that we've re-redirected them? Or have they written them off as moved to the home page for good, meaning that there's no way to direct the authority of the previous URLs to their rightful targets?
Thanks!
-
Recently I just did a domain change of a company website, did a 301 redirect for each page and after 2 months everything were fine and keeping the same position in SERP it previously had (some even gained rank)
The only thing is, the site was quite small, with around 15 links, so was a easy job to do.
-
The message is: This move is permanent, however, crawlers will always follow links and always bump into old version of the page so there is a chance that they may pick up that 301 is changed or removed. Google (Matt Cutts) also stated that they follow 301 chains but they do not guarantee that it would work well if you have many 301s in the chain. Search engines obey 301 much more firmly than rel canonical for instance as 301 is a directive and canonical is a "hint" as he describes it.
To answer your specific question, if you set new redirection rules they will be picked up. That said I have had cases in the past where it took Google more than 6 months to clean up messy redirection situations and some cases where they have completely failed it at. In your case it should be all fairly straightforward.
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
-
Any risks involved when we have huge list of redirects in our website database?
Hi all, We have changed hundreds and thousands of page and page URLs for last 10 years in our website. So, now we are going to redirect most of the old pages/links to the current related pages. This will increase the number of redirects we set in our website database to thousands. Will this put any extra weight on crawler and any risks involved for employing too many redirects. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Should I do multiple 301 redirects?
We launched our website less than a year ago. We had another domain name and business name. I created 301s from the old domain to the new domain, that are still in place now. We are in the process of restructuring our current site which would result in pages getting a new title and URL to match. Essentially it would look something like this:
Web Design | | MAVENTRI
-- olddomain.com/page1 --> newdomain.com/page1 --> newdomain.com/newpage I recently checked the analytics and it looks like we are still getting traffic redirected from the old domain. What is the best way to handle these redirects? Should I redirect a redirect?0 -
Referring subdirectory pages from 3rd hierarchy level pages. Will this hurts?
Hi all, We have product feature pages at 3rd tier like website.com/product/features. We have the help guides for each of these features on a different subdirectory like website.com/help/guides. We are linking these help guides from every page of features. So, will it hurts us anywhere just because we are encouraging 4th tier pages in website, moreover they are from different sub-directory. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Google Search Console Block
Am new to SEO. My clients site was completed using Yoast premium and then used Google search console to initiate the crawl. Initially setup an http:// property and all seemed good. Then i removed that under search console an created an https:// did the render and it appears google has put a block and placed their own robots.txt file which basically has rendered the site useless. Feedback most appreciated.
Web Design | | BoostMyBiz0 -
Affects of a Home Link 301 Permanent Redirect in the Main Nav Bar
Hi I created a home page link in the main nav bar using functions.php request, and this leads to the home page, and it works fine. The logo on the site when clicked, resolves the home page domain.com which is fine. Is it ok to have a home page link in my main nav bar, as well as a clickable logo which on-click returns the web user to the home page also? (any seo implications with the permanent 301 redirects?) I like to give web users the choice especially as not all users are aware that they can click back to the home page by clicking on the logo. I considered breadcrumbs already. Thanks.
Web Design | | SEOguy10 -
How to redirect special pages to new domain?
Hello. I have 2 websites in diffrent category and i want to move some of my visitor that arrived in specific page of doamin1 (url like this: http://example.com/pages/.........)to root of domain 2.
Web Design | | vahidafshari450 -
Site Re-Design - Running old XML site map for 301's
Hi all, We are going to launch a new site design for our current e-commerce site. I have taken this opportunity to change some categories due to keyword research and all old categories will be 301ed to best fitting new category. So I have 2 questions about moving stuff over; 1. I read that leaving the old xml site map running for the first week, would help, because this would give crawlers the chance to run through the site and follow the 301s, which would help pass the juice. How true does this sound? 2. I was thinking of re-writing all category and sub category titles, meta descriptions and on page content. The positive of this is loads of fresh content - but doing this all at the same time with the new site launch might see some major dropping in search ranking. I've identified our top traffic keyword terms/pages, would it be more wise to leave these pages, and change the others, or would the total new fresh burst have a better impact? Cheers
Web Design | | ToxicFox0 -
Random 302 Redirect (Wordpress CMS)
So this new project that i am working on is a redesigned CMS site using Wordpress (php based). Before i started on the project they made a few major updates that include: Changed from ID based URLS to SEO friendly URLS Added multiple languages in directories www.domain.com/en www.domain.com/fr www.domain.com/de etc... Due to the new languages they wanted to have the previous home page, www.domain.com, redirect to the proper language based on their IP address. Currently they are using a 301 redirect through a php header. So if i was visiting the site from my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio and i type www.domain.com into the browser. I would automatically redirect to www.domain.com/en and i would have the option to switch languages if needed. The issue: When i first added their site into SEOMoz the crawl returned a large amount of 302 redirects coming from their old homepage www.domain.com. So i took a look at the header calls using IE's webmaster tools and Firebug in Firefox. In both profilers it showed the same problem. Before the 301 header redirect there was a 302 redirect called first When viewing the response header it mentioned an x-pingback of some file that didn't even exist on the site: www.domain.com/xmlrpc.php This is obviously a huge issue because any link value from the old homepage will be lost due to the 302 not passing the value. I have tried search the almighty Google for help but it has gotten me no where. I have a hunch it is something to do with Wordpress but that is based on nothing but my gut. Any help is greatly appreciated. I got to get that 302 gone or changed to a 301 🙂 Regards - Kyle
Web Design | | kchandler0