Interesting 302 redirect situation - could they be a good idea??
-
Just started with a new SEO client. The site is built on Sharepoint Server 2007 running Windows Server 2003 R2 on IIS 6.5 (I know, fun times for me).
Being a standard crappy Windows setup, URLs and canonicalization is a huge issue: first and foremost, we get a 302 redirect from the root www.example.com to www.example.com/Pages/default.aspx
Now standard SEO best practices dictate that we rewrite and redirect these pages so they're clean URLs. However that may or may not be possible in the current environment - so is the next best thing to change those to 301s so at least link authority is passed better between pages?
Here's the tricky thing - the 302s seem to be preventing Google from indexing the /Pages/default.aspx part of the URL, but the primary URL is being indexed, with the page content accurately cached, etc.
So,
www.example.com 302 redirects to www.example.com/Pages/default.aspx but the indexed page in Google is www.example.com
www.example.com/sample-page/ 302 redirects www.example.com/sample-page/Pages/default.aspx but the indexed page in Google is www.example.com/sample-page/
I know Matt Cutts has said that in this case Google will most likely index the shorter version of the URL, so I could leave it, but I just want to make sure that link authority is being appropriately consolidated.
Perhaps a rel=canonical on each page of the source URL? i.e. the www.example.com/sample-page/ - however is rel=canonical to a 302 really acceptable?
Same goes for sitemaps? I know they always say end-state URLs only, but as the source URLs are being indexed, I don't really want Google getting all the /Pages/default.aspx crap.
Looking for thoughts/ideas/experiences in similar situations?
-
Unfortunately no - client is finally moving to 2013 which is on IIS7 and have proper rewrite facility.
There doesn't appear to be any decent way to accomplish it on 2010/IIS6.
-
I'm super super late on this, but, did you ever decide on a solution to this issue? Sharepoint 2010 runs into the same problems, and even though it looks to be solved in 2013, the install base of 2010 is still pretty large.
-
Thanks! Yeah site was set up not that long ago, but is a great example of why IT Departments should never be trusted to build websites.
I'm just trying to figure out what's even possible on the current platform.
-
Well share point is really for intranets not a internet website, if it is on iis6 then i was proaoably setup before much was known about SEO.
You can do the rewrites in iis6 uising a httpmoedel, i have an a example in both c# and VB on my website
http://thatsit.com.au/seo/tutorials/using-ihttpmodule-visual-basic
-
Obviously the 302 is not a preference - it's the way the system has been set up by IT staff who don't know any better. Removing it might not be as simple as flicking a switch as it is how Sharepoint displays content by default.
"/" doesn't render - it 302 redirects to /Pages/default.aspx - sorry I don't quite get what you're asking here?
As the website was built on Sharepoint and hacked to pieces with custom code, we're still trying to figure out what's actually possible from a URL rewrite perspective. Sharepoint is not a natively SEO-friendly system. Rewrites are possible in IIS7, but more difficult in IIS6
-
i dont think the 302 to /pages/default.aspx has anything to do with windows or asp.net, why not just just remove the 302?
What does "/" and pages/default.aspx render? the same page? then yes use a canonical, but one has to ask why have the 302 at all?
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
-
To remove or not remove a redirected page from index
We have a promotion landing page which earned some valuable inbound links. Now that the promotion is over, we have redirected this page to a current "evergreen" page. But in the search results page on Google, the original promotion landing page is still showing as a top result. When clicked, it properly redirects to the newer evergreen page. But, it's a bit problematic for the original promo page to show in the search results because the snippet mentions specifics of the promo which is no longer active. So, I'm wondering what would be the net impact of using the "removal request " tool for the original page in GSC. If we don't use that tool, what kind of timing might we expect before the original page drops out of the results in favor of the new redirected page? And if we do use the removal tool on the original page, will that negate what we are attempting to do by redirecting to the new page, with regard to preserving inbound link equity?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoelevated0 -
302 > 302 > 301 Redirect Chain Issue & Advice
Hi everyone, I recently relaunched our website and everything went well. However, while checking site health, I found a new redirect chain issue (302 > 302 > 301 > 200) when the user requests the HTTP and non-www version of our URL. Here's what's happening: • 302 #1 -- http://domain.com/example/ 302 redirects to http://domain.com/PnVKV/example/ (the 5 characters in the appended "subfolder" are dynamic and change each time)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andrew_In_Search_of_Answers
• 302 #2 -- http://domain.com/PnVKV/example/ 302 redirects BACK to http://domain.com/example/
• 301 #1 -- http://domain.com/example/ 301 redirects to https://www.domain.com/example/ (as it should have done originally)
• 200 -- https://www.domain.com/example/ resolves properly We're hosted on AWS, and one of my cloud architects investigated and reported GoDaddy was causing the two 302s. That's backed up online by posts like https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46307518/random-5-alpha-character-path-appended-to-requests and https://www.godaddy.com/community/Managing-Domains/My-domain-name-not-resolving-correctly-6-random-characters-are/td-p/60782. I reached out to GoDaddy today, expecting them to say it wasn't a problem on their end, but they actually confirmed this was a known bug (as of September 2017) but there is no timeline for a fix. I asked the first rep I spoke with on the phone to send a summary, and here's what he provided in his own words: From the information gathered on my end and I was able to get from our advanced tech support team, the redirect issue is in a bug report and many examples have been logged with the help of customers, but no log will be made in this case due to the destination URL being met. Most issues being logged are site not resolving properly or resolving errors. I realize the redirect can cause SEO issues with the additional redirects occurring. Also no ETA has been logged for the issue being reported. I do feel for you since I now understand more the SEO issues it can cause. I myself will keep an eye out for the bug report and see if any progress is being made any info outside of this I will email you directly. Thanks. Issue being Experienced: Domains that are set to Go Daddy forwarding IPs may sometimes resolve to a url that has extra characters appended to the end of them. Example: domain1.com forwards to http://www.domain2.com/TLYEZ. However it should just forward to http://www.domain2.com. I think this answers what some Moz users may have been experiencing sporadically, especially this previous thread: https://mza.bundledseo.com/community/q/forwarded-vanity-domains-suddenly-resolving-to-404-with-appended-url-s-ending-in-random-5-characters. My question: Given everything stated above and what we know about the impact of redirect chains on SEO, how severe should I rate this? I told my Director that I would recommend we move away from GoDaddy (something I don't want to do, but feel we _**have **_to do), but she viewed it as just another technical SEO issue and one that didn't necessarily need to be prioritized over others related to the relaunch. How would you respond in my shoes? On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the biggest), how big of a technical SEO is this? Would you make it a priority? At the very least, I thought the Moz community would benefit from the GoDaddy confirmation of this issue and knowing about the lack of an ETA on a fix. Thanks!0 -
Redirect to new SSL Domain
Hi Experts; How to redirect https://old-domain.com to https://new-domain.com without buying new SSL? I have one GoDaddy SSL and I want to use it for a new domain. Its currently use for old domain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cafegardesh0 -
301 Redirecting from domain to subdomain
We're taking on a redesign of our corporate site on our main domain. We also have a number of well established, product based subdomains. There are a number of content pages that currently live on the corporate site that rank well, and bring in a great deal of traffic, though we are considering placing 301 redirects in place to point that traffic to the appropriate pages on the subdomains. If redirected correctly, can we expect the SEO value of the content pages currently living on the corporate site to transfer to the subdomains, or will we be negatively impacting our SEO by transferring this content from one domain to multiple subdomains?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
Wrong redirect used
Hi Folks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Patrick_556
I have a query & looking for some opinions. Our site migrated to https://
Somewhere along the line between the developer & hosting provided 302 redirect was implemented instead of the recommended 301 (the 301 rule was not being honured in the htaccess file.)
1 week passed, I noticed some of our key phrases disappear from the serps 😞 When investigated, I noticed this the incorrect redirect was implemented. The correct 301 redirect has now been implemented & functioning correctly. I have created a new https property in webmaster tools, Submitted the sitemap, Provided link in the robots.txt file to the https sitemap Canonical tags set to correct https. My gut feeling is that Google will take some time to realise the problem & take some time to update the search results we lost. Has anyone experienced this before or have any further thoughts on how to rectify asap.0 -
Tough 301 redirect with a /www in it
Hi Mozzers, I'm using Eggplants 301 redirect via wordpress and for some reason I can't redirect one url. The example of it is below: www.website.com/news/www.website.com As you can see, it looks like there's 2 url's and this plugin doesn't do the trick. Does anyone have any suggestions? Maybe via .htaccess? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
301 redirect with /? in URL
For a Wordpress site that has the ending / in the URL with a ? after it... how can you do a 301 redirect to strip off anything after the / For example how to take this URL domain.com/article-name/?utm_source=feedburner and 301 to this URL domain.com/article-name/ Thank you for the help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | COEDMediaGroup0 -
Multi domain redirect to single domain
Hello, all SEOers. Today, I would like to get some ideas about handling multiple domains. I have a client who bought numerous domains under purpose of prevent abuse of their brand name and at the same time for future uses. This client bought more than 100 domains. Some domains are paused, parked, lived and redirected to other site. I don't worry too much of parked domains and paused domains. However, what I am worrying is that there are about 40 different domains are now redirected to single domain and meta refresh was used for redirections. As far as I know, this can raise red flag for Google. I asked clients to clean up unnecessary domains, yet they want to keep them all. So now I have to figure out how to handle all domains which are redirect to single domain. So far, I came up with following ideas. 1. Build gateway page which shows lists of my client sites and redirect all domains to gateway page. 2. Implement robots.txt file to all different domains 3. Delete the redirects and leave it as parked domains. Could anyone can share other ideas in order to handling current status? Please people, share your ideas for me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Artience0