Google ranking 301 redirected vanity urls
-
We use vanity URLs for offline marketing. An example vanity URL would be www.clientsite.com/promotion, this URL 301 redirects to a page on the site with tracking parameter ex: www.clientsite.com/mainpage?utm_source=source&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=xyz. We are running into issues with Google ignoring the 301 redirect and ranking these vanity URLs instead of the actual page on the website. Any suggestions on how to resolve?
-
Yes, that's how you could do it. Thinking about canonicals made me wonder whether this site auto-generates self-canonicals like some sites do? If there was canonical information on the vanity page pointing to itself, that might conflict with the 301 and may be sending Google mixed messages.
-
Linda,
Correct - it is inflating the traffic we are getting from these print sources. The redirect is generating a 301 status code so it seems like it is set-up correctly. We have about 5 other vanity URLs for that site that Google has decided to rank as well, as far as I can tell there are no sites linking to these URLs either. The website is database driven so the resulting URLs to have additional parameters which do make the URLs longer and not as clean as the vanity URLs. I was thinking about trying canonical link tags. I would just put that in the landing page and the http header for the redirected URL correct?
Thanks for your feedback
-
And that is causing a reporting problem for you, yes? You can't tell whether traffic coming in from that URL is campaign or search traffic. I am assuming you have checked and your 301 is correctly implemented and doing what you expect.
Have you tried doubling up by using a canonical URL? It might not make a difference since Google is ignoring the 301, but it might reinforce the message.
As far as why this is happening, is there something about the vanity URL that might make Google like it so much better? Are there for example some good links to it? [I know it is part of an offline campaign, but someone may have put the URL online.]
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
-
New Website Launch - what to do with the URLs of the pages with ranks
Hey there, So, we are "redesigning" our website, it will have a new user journey and overall layout, use, and feel. Situation: Previously, most of our keywords ranked over time organically though all of them pull up our domain.com as the landing page. Now that we are redesigning the site, most of the keywords pointing to the home page will now have their own page. Keywords properly grouped and content will now be on topic and focused per page. Q: What are the things that we need to do so we won't lose those keywords? Appreciate your help. Also, if you can cite specific SEO checklist when redesigning a site, that'll be a great help! Thanks! Jac
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jac.reyes0 -
Help! The website ranks fine but one of my web pages simply won't rank on Google!!!
One of our web pages will not rank on Google. The website as a whole ranks fine except just one section...We have tested and it looks fine...Google can crawl the page no problem. There are no spurious redirects in place. The content is fine. There is no duplicate page content issue. The page has a dozen product images (photos) but the load time of the page is absolutely fine. We have the submitted the page via webmaster and its fine. It gets listed but then a few hours later disappears!!! The site has not been penalised as we get good rankings with other pages. Can anyone help? Know about this problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Fetch as Google - Redirected
Hi I have swaped from HTTP to HTTPS and put a redirect on for HTTP to redirect to HTTPS. I also put www.xyz.co.uk/index.html to redirect to www.xyz.co.uk When I fetch as Google it shows up redirect! Does this mean that I have too many 301 looping? Do I need the redirect on index.html to root domain if I have a rel conanical in place for index.html htaccess (Linix) - RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^xyz.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia
RewriteRule (.*) https://www.xyz.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^$ index.html [R=301,L]0 -
Remove URLs that 301 Redirect from Google's Index
I'm working with a client who has 301 redirected thousands of URLs from their primary subdomain to a new subdomain (these are unimportant pages with regards to link equity). These URLs are still appearing in Google's results under the primary domain, rather than the new subdomain. This is problematic because it's creating an artificial index bloat issue. These URLs make up over 90% of the URLs indexed. My experience has been that URLs that have been 301 redirected are removed from the index over time and replaced by the new destination URL. But it has been several months, close to a year even, and they're still in the index. Any recommendations on how to speed up the process of removing the 301 redirected URLs from Google's index? Will Google, or any search engine for that matter, process a noindex meta tag if the URL's been redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trung.ngo0 -
When is it time to kill 301 redirects
3 months we updated our site design design and as such lots of page urls changed. At the time we 301 redirected about 100 pages. (All pages are on the same domain - 301 redirects like .com/about-us/company to .com/company) Anyhow my question is should I leave these redirects active indefinitely or kill them assuming value has passed through by now? Your Thoughts are welcomed. Thanks, Glen.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdvanceSystems0 -
Url rewrite & 301 redirects
Hi all I am having some issues rearding url rewrites and 301 redirects with 1 and 1 hosting and am unsure of the best approach. The website is a custom made shopping cart system with categories and products. The current urls for categories are : index.php?l=product_list&c=1 The new url format required is : /banner-stands The current urls for products are : index.php?l=product_detail&c=1&p=1 The new url format required is : /banner-stands/banner-stand Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vividwebdesign0 -
Changing your URL? Impact on rankings?
I have been thinking about changing our webadres for quite a while but I'm too afraid of the impact on my SERP. I understand I would need to use the Google Change of Address tool & 301 redirects. Am I missing something? What is your experience with changing the URL of a website? How has this impacted your SERP? In the past I heard someone say it will damage the linkjuice by 20%. Is that accurate? If you change the URL, is there a blank period of where your old site nor your new site are indexed? Or does Google handle this transition well?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wellnesswooz0 -
Why isnt my crawl results showing a 301 redirect even though I have a 301 rewrite in my .htaccess file?
Ive searched the previous Q&A's & cant find an answer so I;ll ask it here 🙂 crawling my site shows isnt the 301 redirect that i have from my non www to my www domainIts only showing all the results for my www subdomain.As i'm new to SEO & SeoMoz I dont fully understand. Any help would be greatly appreciated because my site is like 2 & a half years old & i'm trying to learn seo so I can rank higher in the serp's. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PCTechGuy20120