5 replies to this topic

[Funky Petz]

I have two web sites both selling pet products one is more specialised, selling dog clothing and accessories and the other sells all kinds of pet products. I've decided that I want to just concentrate on one company so wish to "merge" the more specialised site into the other one.

I was going to do 301 redirects on each page, but I wanted to have some kind of notice telling people that the two companies had merged and they will be taken to the new site.

My question is how can I notify visitors before the redirect kicks in?

I'd really appreciate any thoughts you may have.

Many thanks.

Warren

Edited by Funky Petz, 11 March 2009 - 12:06 PM.

[Randy]

You can't provide such a message if you're going to provide a server side 301 type of redirect. With those the redirect happens before any page is displayed. Unfortunately, 301 redirects are the best course for redirects where the search engines are concerned.

To provide a message first then forward you're probably going to be looking at either a meta-refresh or some sort of javascript redirect with a timer. These are not the best for the search engines and as a general rule will not pass the inherent value of the original page through to the new destination url.

[Funky Petz]

You can't provide such a message if you're going to provide a server side 301 type of redirect. With those the redirect happens before any page is displayed. Unfortunately, 301 redirects are the best course for redirects where the search engines are concerned.

To provide a message first then forward you're probably going to be looking at either a meta-refresh or some sort of javascript redirect with a timer. These are not the best for the search engines and as a general rule will not pass the inherent value of the original page through to the new destination url.

Thanks for that. I just had an idea though.

What if I put my redirect as:

CODE

[i]redirect 301 /page.php http://www.domain.co.uk/page.php?ref=funky[/i]

Than added this php code to the destination page:
[codebox]if (strstr($current_position, 'funky')) {
echo 'My Message';
}[/codebox]

Would this have any effect on the passing of ranking to the new page?
Would I need a Canonical link on the page.php?ref=funky page?

Thanks

Warren

[Jill]

I would suggest just putting your message on the home page of the one you ultimately redirect to.

[Randy]

From the purely technical point of view, the wrong page address would be getting the link pop pass through. It would go to the page.php?ref=funky address and not to the page.php address. And frankly I wouldn't count on the relatively new canonical stuff to keep the link pop flowing. I've not seen anybody with knowledge of the inner workings of how the search engines are handling those say it can be used in conjunction with 301s.

If you absolutely had to do it with a ref=funky or similar query string you'd need to throw another 301 in there. Similar to how one handles affiliate codes being appended to a url if one wants to get the link value back to the main page from affiliate links.

A sample of how the process would go is something like:

1. 301 Redirect from the old domain to the new one as you've laid out, with an additional query string you can later use as a trigger.

2. On the pages of the final destination perform a quick check for the special query string. If it tests false, load the page as normal. If it tests true, set a cookie on the users machine. Again, something you're going to use as a trigger later. After the cookie is set 301 redirect the user back to the same URL, except without the ref=funky query string.

3. On the pages of the final destination domain set up another little script to look for your cookie you just set. If the cookie is set give them your special message. If it's not, don't.

It's convoluted at best. There are two redirects in the process, but I've never seen any of the search engines have trouble with two. I wouldn't string 4 or 5 of them together, but 2 should be okay.

Frankly though, I'm not sure I'd go to all of the trouble. I've merged sites together several times and seen no ill effect. About the most I've ever done is put an entry in the FAQ or Knowledge Base for several months answering the question of why they typed in one domain name but ended up at another place. Or placed a link somewhere on the main nav that referenced the other domain that went off to a special page explaining what's happened in the merge. Mainly to let 'em know they're still working with the same people, just under a name that was unknown to them before.

[Funky Petz]

Thanks very much for that. I think I'll keep it simple and put a message on the new site

Thanks again

w