29 Responses to “Understanding Web Page Redirection, the smart way”

1. Sarah DC said,

   July 19, 2010 @ 9:09 pm

   hey ! great blog ! it really helped me understand website redirecting

   I have a quick question for you. I’m not sure how relevant this is to website redirecting but I’m still really confused. My dad is opening a used-car dealership and a rental car company. They will be at the same location so he wants to use one domain name (which is for the used-car dealership) for both the companies. The problem is that when someone searches, for example on google, for “car rentals” they won’t see his company because it is on a used-car dealership website. Do you have any suggestions to how I can fix this problem? If you can get back to me asap it would be great !

   Thanks so much,
   Sarah

2. Antoine said,

   July 9, 2010 @ 10:51 am

   Hello there,

   I have a problem. The company I work in owns 2 domain names. a dot com and a dot cn.
   until now, the dot com was being redirected to the dot cn, which we don’t want anymore, trying to use the dot com on its own as a sales platform.

   With my ftp client, I have deleted all fils from the website, apart from one (ftpquota), and uploaded new index page, with no redirection in the html code.
   Still, I am being redirected on the dot cn whenever I enter the dot com address.
   Could you please help me on that? I am sure it is quite easy, but I don’t know much about all that.
   Thank you for your help
   Antoine

3. Josh said,

   July 3, 2010 @ 7:06 pm

   how can one get penalized for using client-side redirection? the whole de-indexed sounds very complicated and I would like it in understandable english, short sweet and to the point?

4. manx said,

   May 25, 2010 @ 8:05 pm

   Nice blog, thanks for the infomating!!!!!

5. GDI said,

   May 19, 2010 @ 10:40 pm

   Nice blog, thanks for the info!

6. Erin said,

   March 30, 2010 @ 4:43 pm

   Hey,

   What an awesome site, first of all!!! What a wealth of useful information!!! I’m so glad I stumbled upon it.

   So I have a question… I’m working with a friend that has 2 web site addresses. The first is currently registered and hosted with this local company (with the most atrocious customer service I’ve ever actually experienced first hand) and the registration goes for another 3 years I think, but the hosting expires in a month and we’re going to let it because they SUCK!!! The second domain is registered through GoDaddy and hosted by Weebly. Now the site that’s with Weebly they want to use to replace the old site with the “Big Dumb Ass” host (as my friend calls them). What I’m wondering is… if we’ve got a site registered but no hosting, what will be the best way to point it to the new site? I don’t think Weebly will let you direct two sites to the same place… or at least if they do I haven’t figured out how to do it yet.

   Any thoughts or suggestions?

   Thanks!
   e

7. Lary Stucker said,

   January 11, 2010 @ 8:10 pm

   In iis is there a way to create a 301 redirect on the server side where I don’t have to leave the old file in place? We chenged the directory strucutre of our site and want to delete the old files once we have our 301s in place.

8. Maynard Hidrogo said,

   January 6, 2010 @ 2:36 pm

   Where do you get this information? Thanks a lot

9. David Becker said,

   December 22, 2009 @ 10:16 pm

   Hi Steven,

   I’m having an issue with my web host. All I want is a permanent redirect from http://elearningconsultant.com.au to http://www.elearningconsultant.com.au because I’m told my page rank will be diluted without it. Firstly is this true? and secondly why is my ISP saying it cant be done? They are running IIS and I sent them some links on how to do it on IIS. Thier last email was:

   I’ve had a look at the links your provided and while you can indeed
   provide a permanent redirect to _another_ site, if you redirect your
   site permanently to your site, I think you would cause a looping error.

   HT access files do not form a part of the windows IIS server framework,
   and as such don’t work on windows IIS servers.

   Unfortunately after much discussion in the office we are not able to
   offer you another solution other than Joels initial one.

   Joels solution was:
   There is no way to redirect from non-www to www with IIS. The only way
   this can be performed is in the code of your website.

   The way Deepna set it up earlier would be on for people going directly
   to your domain, but if they browse to a page on your domain, it would
   not be able to redirect them as it only redirects access to the
   index.html page.

   Essentially, the only way you will be able to set up this redirect is to
   write some code that is on each page of your site, that checks the URL
   for the ‘www’ and if it doesn’t exist, redirects people to the correct
   place.

   Unfortunately there’s no easier way to accomplish this that will cover
   every URL people will browse to.

   I only want the domain redirected, not every page. Anyway I’m not technical enough to offer them a solution, so any suggestions you can give me are greatly appreciated:)

   Happy holidays!

   Dave

10. Daniel Bely said,

    April 9, 2009 @ 6:13 pm

    Very nice and helpful article. Thanks!

11. jeffrey said,

    March 8, 2009 @ 6:50 am

    Hi,

    We are planning on using wordpress mu for hostings our clients blogs while at the same time giving them the option to have their blogs redirected to their own domain name.

    We would prefer to set up each clients blogs in their own sub directory versus sub domain.

    I would appreciate if you could share your opinion/ thoughts on redirecting each clients blogs from the sub directory to there domain name using 301 redirect.

    e.g ourdomain.com/user1/blog to their domain e.g. blog.theirdomain.com or theirdoamin.com/blog

    Thanks,

    Jeffrey

12. Steven Hargrove said,

    January 22, 2009 @ 4:28 pm

    @Tim:

    These articles I have written we’re mainly intended for redirect advice in regards to search engine optimization.

    In summary, javascript/meta redirects are not a bad thing if you don’t care about SEO. (like on an intranet)

13. Tim said,

    January 22, 2009 @ 9:19 am

    Hi,

    To echo Paul’s question, what if I am maintaining pages using a CMS where I have no server access but I can add html and javascript to my page? Also bear in mind I have no concerns regarding search engines on my password protected intranet.

    For me your articles are at best unhelpful and at worst dismissive. It tells me to do something I can’t do and doesn’t tell me how to do something I could do (because apparently to do so would be rubbish).

    It wouldn’t hurt you to include a couple of lines of client side code with caveats.

    Tim

14. Brendan said,

    January 19, 2009 @ 12:04 pm

    “it is intended to be a permanent redirect”

    Does that mean that it is permanent, or just intended to be? I intend to use this to link a couple different domain name variations to one site, but will I be able to remove the redirect if I want to move the main site to that hosting service?

15. Jim Titus said,

    January 10, 2009 @ 11:11 am

    Thank you very much for posting this article and related comments. Unlike most of your commenters, I am a total amateur. I have perhaps the oldest site on my particular topic, which consists largely of government reports that I wrote before 1997, and uploaded onto the free webpace that came with my dial-up ISP a few years before the federal agency for which I work got around to creating a web site. So there are alot of old links that have accumulated from other researchers, federal agencies, NY Times, etc. The problem is: the ISP doesn’t have high-speed so I have been paying for a full ISP account just so my web site does not lose the google ranking. And I only get 10 meg so I put some of the site on my father’s free space (same ISP) a few years ago… It is time to move to real webhosting. Needless to say, I didn’t bother buying a domain name which at the time cost $100 plus about $50/yr. So my main page was at http://www.OldISP/myname.html

    So I bought a domain name and a webhosting account, and before even moving my site to the new server, I set up the new domain name to forward to my old web site. But of course that only works for the part of the site on http://www.OldISP/myname.html. Anyway, I have the website of what had been on my father’s ISP copied onto the new webhosting, and the time has come to start putting in 301 redirects. Before actually killing the old part of that site, I decided to implement a test, but the test doesn’t work.

    As far as I know, I created an .htaccess file with a single line of code (which copy):

    redirect 301 test.html http://users.rcn.com/jtitus/Holding/NRJ.html

    I say as far as I know because I used “Notepad” which saves as .txt and then I simply edited out the .txt from the extension name. I uploaded this file into the same directory as my index.html. So I assume that if I change “index” to “test” within the larger URL of my main page, that it should forward to the second destination NRJ. But instead I get a 404 error.

    I have written the ISP but they take several days to write back on these matters, and are focussed more on their own system than solving a problem–and really, what incentive do they have to help me move off their space anyway other than (perhaps) looking a bit better for not being known for dead links? Any thoughts would be very much appreciated.

    Best regards

    Jim

16. Darko Zganjer said,

    January 5, 2009 @ 6:38 pm

    and the same for adding www to adomain.

    Options +FollowSymlinks
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(yourdomain\.com) [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.%1/1 [r=301,L,NE]

    a]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/(robots\.txt|favicon\.ico|sitemap\.xml)$
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.askapache\.com$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.askapache.com/1 [R=301,L]

    b]
    #Options +FollowSymlinks
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{http_host} ^yourdomain.com
    RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/1 [R=301,L]

    c]
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} yourdomain\.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.yourdomain\.com [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.yourdomain\.com/$1 [L,R=301]

17. Darko Zganjer said,

    January 5, 2009 @ 6:37 pm

    You have a very useful website. Thanks.

    I have seen many different methods of redirect and I guess everyone has reasons for there way, but no one ever explains the differences and benifits to different ways. just that theres is the best. and everyone has an opinionon blogs etc.
    can you help out? thanks.

    a
    #Options +FollowSymLinks
    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com$[OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com$
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/1 [R=301,L]

    b
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?olddomain\.com
    RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/1 [R=301,L]

    c
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.olddomain\.com [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^$
    RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.newdomain.com/1 [L,R=permanent]

18. Paul said,

    December 19, 2008 @ 2:01 am

    What should one do if they do not have server side abilities like .htaccess, php etc.?

19. Steven Hargrove said,

    August 24, 2008 @ 4:15 pm

    @Scott:

    This is actually expected behavior. You have to keep in mind that when you change something on your site (like adding a 301 redirect) - you can’t expect Google to mirror you’re expectations. It’s a waiting game.

    What’s happening is; Google is re-analyzing your new site. IT IS a new site, whether its a domain transfer or not. I highly doubt the age of the domain itself holds any weight. However, rather the age of a site actually existing on that domain is much more of a factor.

    The 301 redirect you are performing from you’re *old site* to you’re *new site* is correct per-say. However - yes, any links pointing to you’re old site should be redirected to the new one, thus Google will recognize this eventually.

    You have to look at it in a non-linear fashion - you have changed you’re domain name! This means, that in terms of SEO - a lot of the old work you may have done on you’re old domain - you will have to do again on the new domain. It’s a waiting game for the most part.

    As for you’re question “should I just switch it all back to thew old domain name?” - well I can’t say for sure what the effects would be. However my guess would be that google would eventually recognize this. You may have a good amount of time (1-2 months maybe?) before you’re site shows back up in its previous ranking. If you’re looking for immediate results, you won’t find any - but this is probably the fastest positive results.

    Was there any other purpose surrounding changing the domain name, other than the name was better? Because in my opinion, that certainly doesn’t justify an entire domain transfer when talking about SEO.

    Hope that helps.

20. Scott said,

    August 24, 2008 @ 4:37 am

    Another thought. Is it to late to revert back to the old domain? Would this look strage? Should we site tight and sweat it out?

21. Scott said,

    August 24, 2008 @ 4:32 am

    Our old domain http://www.ezwatchstore.com was a good site with a pr of 5 and we rated up on the first page of several great volume search words such as security cameras and video security. We wanted to move higher and all indications were that a more descriptive domain such as http://www.ezwatch-security-cameras.com would help. So we performed a 301 redirect. Well everything stayed the same for a about a week. Then overnight we fell off every first page search. We found ourselves on page 3,4 and 5 of a search. A week later our precious pr of 5 went o 0. The only thing we changed was the domain. Ouch.. I later realize the old domain was just that, old. 5 years, and the new domain was well, new. 2 months. Any suggestions?

22. Rick Lim said,

    August 23, 2008 @ 10:28 am

    Thanks for this great tutorial.

23. Randall Glass said,

    July 26, 2008 @ 10:41 am

    You nevered answered Colin Miller’s question.

    I would like to know the answer to whether a 301 redirect would affect your google ranking.

    Say like from a site with poor google ranking to a site with good google ranking or
    visa versa.

    Would some other redirect work better in this cause.

    I hope you can answer this question.

    Randall

24. Colin Miller said,

    June 13, 2008 @ 3:40 pm

    So… If I want to move a site from a domain that has good PR to a new domain that is more keyword orientated (using 301), would the page rank transfer? Or would I lose it?

    The new domain actually consists of good keywords that I am most searched under, whilst my current domain doesn’t, its just my name. i would be interested in your your thoughts on this, it’s a pretty big gamble, but you may know the answer

25. Joe said,

    May 29, 2008 @ 12:54 pm

    Hi Steve,

    The articles are excellent. I have a question that I would like to ask to see if you can offer any advice.

    We are redoing our company website, keeping the same domain name but the pages will be different. We are moving from an old, antiquated structure to a Joomla-based website (on Linux) with SEO.

    We are using Redirect 301s in our .htaccess file for pretty much all of the pages, and our tests show that they work fine. The issue is this:

    In the old website, my top-level Support page was:

    http://www.mydomain.com/support/tech-1.asp

    In the new website, the top-level Support page is:

    http://www.mydomain.com/Support/Tech-Support-Overview.html

    So, we put in a Redirect 301 as follows (which works fine):

    Redirect 301 /support/tech-1.asp http://www.mydomain.com/Support/Tech-Support-Overview.html

    So far, so good. However, in various documents we send out to customers, we tell them that if they have any support questions, they should go to:

    http://www.mydomain.com/support

    In the old website, if you typed that into the browser you immediately were redirected to http://www.mydomain.com/support/tech-1.asp.

    However, typing it into the new browser brings a 404 error page.

    In order to rectify this, I proposed that we place a new Redirect in .htaccess as follows:

    Redirect 301 /support http://www.mydomain.com/Support/Tech-Support-Overview.html

    My MIS person refuses to do this, saying that the initial URL _MUST_ be a page/file with an ending like htm, html, asp, php, etc.

    Is this correct? If so, do you have any advice?

    Many thanks.

    Joe

26. Steven Hargrove said,

    May 22, 2008 @ 11:19 pm

    Chris M,

    I can not guarantee that a 302 won’t effect your search engine rankings. However, I can tell you that I believe that it is probably not exactly the route you want to take.

    You see, 302 temporary redirects are typically rendered as being well, temporary. And of course the search engines will recognize this. I do not know the exact effect of this, but I don’t presume it will positively affect your rankings.

    Your best bet? Solve the legal issue. I don’t know the legal details, but let me provide a scenario:

    I have my site on a domain name called widget.com. Let’s say “Widget” is a trademarked name and obviously I have legal issues there.

    What would I do to keep my traffic and cut my losses? Create a new, legal domain name, and use a 301 redirect from widget.com -> LegalWidget.com.

    If the legal issues require you to take the site down immediately, and you are just looking for solutions? Well, I would probably stay away from 302 redirects. Instead, I would post a page for the site, that clearly tells my visitors that this site is now called LegalWidget.com, and they can find what their looking for there.

    It’s a tough spot your in, don’t take the redirecting methods lightly.

    Hope that helps, good luck!

27. Chris M said,

    May 22, 2008 @ 3:58 pm

    Thank you for your article. I have a situation that I think requires a 302 temporary redirect. Please give me some advice:

    A client of mine has to stop using their current website for 2 years due to a legal matter. In the meantime, they want that URL to be redirected to their new website URL. After the two years are over, they hope to have the other website up and running again.

    We do not want to be penalized by the search engines in any way. In this case, what would you do? I have never had to redirect a website before and I want to do it correctly. Thanks!

    Chris

28. Bob Miller said,

    March 22, 2008 @ 2:08 pm

    What I learned was I will not do it. I’ll just put a link on page until I can get someone to do a server side redirect.

    Thanks’
    Bob Miller

29. Brad Montgomery said,

    March 7, 2008 @ 2:57 pm

    thanks. I’m updating my site now and this article is really helpful.

    Thanks for the post.

    Brad

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