13 replies to this topic

[AlDugan]

Ok, I know there's been a lot of 301 redirect issues on the forum lately but with this post I would like to clarify my specific problem.

A couple months ago, our site implemented a program called XQASP which rewrites dynamic url's to appear as static html files. An example rewrite would be something like this:

old url: domain.com/product.aspx?id=123&id2=673

new url: domain.com/xq/aspx/id.123/id2.673/qx/product.html

The rewrites went fine and search engines have been spidering through our site much easier now so as far as indexing the new url's all is good and well.

However, the problems are: 1. Some of the old url's are also listed in Google's index (duplicate content issues?) 2. With the rewrite I am losing all the link popularity from the old url's. I was intending on 301 redirecting the old url's to the new one's but since in reality they are the exact same page this option seems impossible.

Is a 301 redirect possible on a rewritten url or will I always end up in a loop since they are technically the same pages? Or should I put a workaround in place such as creating a copy of the base file "product.aspx" such as "product2.aspx" and setting the redirect from "product.aspx" to "product2.aspx"? (I know this could work but will I lose any ground in the search engines for the thousands of pages I managed to get indexed over the last couple of months and are just starting to see some rankings for?)

Sorry for the long post, I am just hoping to finally lay to rest this 301 plague.

Thank You.

[Shane]

We have the same ASP-rewriting concept (though not the exact same software) on a site I work on. To my knowledge, there isn't any way to fix the problem you describe. The brand new ASPX method would have been best. I'd probably go ahead and bite the bullet and do it now.

[AlDugan]

Using the method of creating the new pages to redirect to, do you think that would effect our rankings at all? I'm assuming the new pages will simply replace the old in the SERPs eventually without effecting ranking too much if at all. Once the pages do get replaced in the seach indexes I may even see a boost in ranking because the link popularity from the old and previously new pages should transfer over to the newest page (ex. any product2 pages). Are my assumptions correct?

Edited by indepthmedia, 25 January 2005 - 04:26 PM.

[Shane]

Yes. If you use 301's, the old pages (eventually) end up having all their attributes assigned to the new pages.

Note that you need to be ultra careful about keeping those URLs absolutely consistent, too. Reversing the order of the query string variables or even the case of any of the letters in the URL will cause the URLs to be treated as completely different pages.

[AlDugan]

You mean when specifying the old url's that will be redirected, right?

ex old url: domain.com/product.aspx?id=123&id2=673

make sure I don't do something like: domain.com/product.aspx?id2=673&id=123

or even: domain.com/Product.aspx?id=123&id2=673 (capitalized "P")

[Randy]

Right Al.

Being consistent is the key. Especially in how you link to those pages internally. In other words, it is best if any internal links are pointing to your rewritten URL string rather than the old ?id=xxx&id2=xxx

[Shane]

It's critical everywhere those URL's are used: on your site, in the redirects and when other sites link to your pages.

[AlDugan]

Thanks for the advice guys. Much appreciated. (While I'm at I am also going to make sure our newst url's are all lower case just to be consistent because because many of our old ones were mixed, but they were at least all consistent throughout the site so setting up the new redirect shouldn't be a problem.)

[brickholius]

How would one deal with using mod rewrite so you have listings instead of news_detail.php?Id=413 and have news_detail/1234.html. So basically the idea is to have the html pages (modrewrite) so the site gets indexed but the news articles and jobs get axed after 90 days. All that work to get indexed but the news/jobs gets removed after 90 days. How should I deal with this? Can i set something up to have news articles/job listings archived and have things get redirected auto after 90 days or something. I provide a lot of content like news and jobs that expires over time but i need to have a way to make it SEO friendly with mod rewrite but they currently disappear after 90 days. Any suggestions as how to deal with this..and whether a system to archive items and redirect is a good solution. Thanks,

Brick

[Randy]

Is it safe assume the software on the site is automatically expiring the listings after 90 days? If so, it would have to be tweaked to create the archives section.

It would be best to go back to whoever makes that system to find out what creating an archives section would entail. It's quite possible that it's automatically deleting those entries after a certain amount of time.

That said, I'm not positive that it would necessarily be a good for users to archive all of the information. Especially the jobs part of it, since most of those positions may well already be filled after 90 days. That'll be a determination you'll have to make. I can see how keeping the news section would make sense.

On the mod_rewrite question, something like the following should do the trick if it's enabled on your server:

CODE

RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^news_detail/(.*)\.html$ news_detail.php?Id=$1

[brickholius]

thanks randy.

brick

[Grumpus]

Those superfluous dots in the middle of the URL may be messing up how your PR gets passed to the new locations, as well.

px/id.123/id2.673/qx/p

Technically, the first dot after the dots in the domain name is the start of the file extension. So, the spiders may be looking at your site in the following format:

www.site.com/directory/page.ext

domain.com/xq/aspx/id.123/id2.673/qx/product.html

G.

[brickholius]

Randy,

I used mod rewrite to jobs make them look like /job/433.html. The issue is that each of the pages has the same title which is "Job Detail for www.XXXX.com". Google does not like to see the same page title. How do i deal with this issue of different end address but same page title? I want to have different page titles for each one if possible. I have solved the issue of the clean ending but not sure about the page title.

brick

Is it safe assume the software on the site is automatically expiring the listings after 90 days?  If so, it would have to be tweaked to create the archives section. 

It would be best to go back to whoever makes that system to find out what creating an archives section would entail.  It's quite possible that it's automatically deleting those entries after a certain amount of time.

That said, I'm not positive that it would necessarily be a good for users to archive all of the information.  Especially the jobs part of it, since most of those positions may well already be filled after 90 days.  That'll be a determination you'll have to make.  I can see how keeping the news section would make sense.

On the mod_rewrite question, something like the following should do the trick if it's enabled on your server:

CODE

RewriteEngine on
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^news_detail/(.*)\.html$ news_detail.php?Id=$1

[Randy]

hmm... It shouldn't be too difficult to do if you don't mind digging into the code a little bit.

Can we assume that the php page is actually pulling some data from your database and sticking it in a variable? Some info like "Job Detail in <some city>" or "Job Detail in <some category>"?

If so you could always echo that/those variables in your php code and have them be dynamically inserted into your title tag.

See if there's a field in your database that includes the keyword phrasess you're shooting for generally. If there is it's a pretty simple thing to echo those into the title like:

CODE

<title><? echo $somevariable ?> - wwwYourSite.com</title>