Are these redirects damaging my rankings
-
Hi, just been going through my google webmaster tools and i have found a number of soft 404 errors and was shocked to see these redirects going to my home page.
| URL | Response Code | Detected |
| --- | --- | --- |<colgroup><col style="width: 45px;"><col style="width: 80px;"><col><col style="width: 120px;"><col style="width: 90px;"></colgroup>
| | 1 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity | | 7/25/13 |
| | 2 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1068-coronation-street-nick-proposes-to-leanne | | 7/28/13 |
| | 3 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1086-coronation-street-fiz-nearly-gets-tyrone-in-trouble-with-kirsty | | 7/28/13 |
| | 4 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1155-coronation-street-kylie-considers-telling-david-about-her-affair | | 7/28/13 |
| | 5 | staging1/jupgrade2/category-menu/item/1157-coronation-street-fiz-is-worried-when-kirsty-pays-her-a-visit | | 7/28/13 |
| | 6 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/750-actress-hilary-duff-is-sued-over-car-accident | | 7/25/13 |
| | 7 | staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/843-what-your-dogs-bottom-scooting-behaviour%E2%80%99-really-meansI would have thought that the developer who upgraded my site would have either had these blocked or directed them to the correct page. i am now guessing that there are going to be hundreds of these appearing and would like some serious advice.normally with old pages i would have them going to the relevant articles or pages but it seems the developer has redirected hundreds of these to my home page, which i guess is going to confuse google. i would like to know if this will confuse google have all these pages going to my home page.i have tried to find out where the developer in my site has redirected the pages as they are not in my htaccess file, i use joomla.can anyone let me know what i should be doing with these to solve the problemmany thanks | -
thank you for this, will do this now, many thanks for the great advice
-
You have a robots.txt file in your root - http://www.in2town.co.uk/robots.txt >> add
Disallow: /staging1/
In Webmaster Tools go to Google Index >> Remove URLs >> Create a new removal request >> enter http://www.in2town.co.uk/staging1/ >> Continue >> set Reason to remove directory >> Submit Request.
For canonical refer to http://moz.com/blog/rel-confused-answers-to-your-rel-canonical-questions
I hope this helps.
-
that sounds like a great solution, can you explain how i would do this, as never done this before
-
Why don't you put /staging1/ in your robots.txt, then remove that directory from index in Webmaster Tools. Backing that up with canonical tags in case any similar slip through the net.
-
the problem i have is, these upgrade files like this one
staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity
this is a live article, so google is seeing the live url address which is http://www.in2town.co.uk/gastric-band-hypnotherapy/gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity
and then they are seeing the upgrade file which is
www.in2town.co.u,/staging1/jupgrade2/component/k2/item/475-gastric-band-hypnotherapy-expert-says-government-are-not-doing-enough-to-fight-obesity
all the upgrade files have been redirected to my home page, not sure this is right.
-
I'm not a Joomla expert but if you have nothing in your .htaccess like 'ErrorDocument 404 index.php' then Joomla is probably handling the error redirection internally in maybe 'templates/system/error.php' or 'sef.php'
I understand settings in these files can override your .htaccess as well.
You can have any page as the 404 page as long as the header response is 404 - that is all Google needs to know. The potential downside is user experience - I normally would suggest a custom 404 page with your menu system, or 301 permanent redirects to suitable alternatives (possibly homepage), as you suggest.
Webmaster Tools is not the best place to check current 404s. I would do some live checking using say Screaming Frog and spot check the exact header responses using Fiddler. I've seen some strange header codes coming from a problematic Joomla setup.
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
-
301 Redirect
Hello Moz Community, I have a question regarding 301 redirecting a new domain that contains keywords relevant to my website. However, I do NOT want to change my current domain. My main question is, by just redirecting this new domain to my current website, will those keywords in the new domain help with ranking in anyway? Thanks in advance for any help!
Technical SEO | | WyzeOwl0 -
Which way round to 301 redirect?
Hi We have just added a new layered navigation menu to our website. so for example we had Before : www.tidy-books.co.uk/chidlrens-bookcases (this has the seo juice) And Now: http://www.tidy-books.co.uk/childrens-bookcases-book-storage/childrens-bookcases Might be a stupid question but do I redirect the 'now' url to the 'before' url or the the other way round I look forward to hearing your thoughts Thanks
Technical SEO | | tidybooks0 -
Fix redirect loop
Hi,
Technical SEO | | bshanahan
I've been trying set up a 301 redirect from http://domestiquecap.com to www.domestiquecap.com but one was already set up by my client the other way around (from www to http://) so it's creating a redirect loop. However, we don't know where that original redirect was set up. The htaccess file doesn't appear to have the redirect and neither does the control panel of our hosting company. We need to turn off that original redirect so that I can instead redirect to the www subdomain. Where else could this 301 redirect have been set up? Is there a tool to diagnose where the 301 redirect was created so that I can turn it off? I am thinking maybe it was created via the domain registrar (GoDaddy) since the client has the login there and hasnt shared it with me.0 -
What damage can internal duplicated hidden links do to rankings?
Hi, I have a rental website, www.akilar.com, for Spain. My question is, on the home page we have links to the seperate regions of the country. Somehow in the redesign of the site, these links have been placed on every page of the site and hidden in the code at the top. The links are there as well on each page in the header, these are additional. The page quantity is over 2000 pages. Also this is taking the internal links well over the limit. In anyones opinion what damage has this caused as our rankings of late have fallen. Thanks very much for your help!
Technical SEO | | AkilarOffice0 -
Redirects
I have a question about 404ed domains and old domains. #1 A domain has many links to it, but has been 404ed for 4 months. Should I redirect to a page I own and is almost exactly the same content. Will the fact that it was once 404ed be an issue? #2 I have an old domain that has many links but has been stagnant for a long time. Are these links still valuable and I should I redirect them to an important page on a different site? Does penguin influence your advice?
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Automatic redirect to external urls
Hi all, I'm developing a dynamic qr code service.. The service works in the following way: You create an account with an associated QR CODE pointing to a url like:
Technical SEO | | raulo79
- http://domain.me/username The user can change the target of this url.. he can:
- point to an external url ( his website for example)
- point to a vCard download page
- a mobile ready webpage ( no redirection in this case)... Visiting http://domain.me/username my company logo is displayed and we redirect the visitor with a: header("Refresh: 5;URL=http://userdomain.tld"); Google is indexing many user's URLs, this is good for those users pointing to the mobile ready webpage, in this case there is no redirection, but Google is indexing many urls that redirect to an external url and I don't know how to avoid this.. I can't do an header('Location: http://www.example.com/'); because I need to display our logo after redirection.. how can I do google friendly? Sorry for my english, I hope you can undestand the problem. Best regards.
Mauro.0 -
301 redirects and OSE
We run a blog/video real estate site (yochicago.com) as one of the venues for sponsored content for our clients looking for off-page SEO and inbound links. I'm working with a client who we've linked to a handful of times in the last few weeks, but I'm not seeing any external links from our site on PRO/OSE. Come to find that our writer has been linking to http://clientsite.com, instead of http://www.clientsite.com, which is the canonical site. I wouldn't have thought that this would make a difference, and about an hour of web research seems to confirm that it shouldn't make a difference, save for losing a little bit of SEO credit. What am I missing? Any input would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mikescotty0 -
Is a 302 redirect the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page?
Hi guys The widely followed SEO best practice is that 301 redirects should be used instead of 302 redirects when it is a permanent redirect that is required. Matt Cutts said last year that 302 redirects should "only" be used for temporary redirects. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more For a site that I am looking at the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool lists as an issue that the URL / redirects to www.abc.com/Pages/default.aspx with a 302 redirect. On further searching I found that on a Google Support forum (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=276539078ba67f48&hl=en) that a Google Employee had said "For what it's worth, a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page (such as from "/" to "/sites/bursa/"). This is one of the few situations where a 302 redirect is preferred over a 301 redirect." Can anyone confirm if it is the case that "a 302 redirect is the correct redirect from a root URL to a detail page"? And if so why as I haven't found an explanation. If it is the correct best practice then should redirects of this nature be removed from displaying as issues in the SEO Moz Crawll Diagnostics tool Thanks for your help
Technical SEO | | CPU0