7 replies to this topic

[etzeppy]

I am looking for a way to generate a 301 redirect within a blog hosted on Google's Blogger service. I am trying to redirect one blogspot.com subdomain to another. I can use a meta refresh redirect and it works, but I am concerned that this method could have a negative impact with indexing and Blogger's spam policies.

I do not have access to htaccess or mod_rewrite commands. I don't think I can even run php code but I'm not 100% on that.

Is anyone aware of a trick that would allow me to redirect correctly within Bloggers template language (which looks mostly like html)?

Thanks

[Randy]

You cannot 301 redirect in HTML, so you cannot 301 redirect blogger posts to another location. The technical issue being that a 301 redirect has to happen before HTTP Headers are sent to the browser, and html would have already sent the headers. Or in other words, to end up with a 301 it has to occur before a page starts to load. And you can't do this via an entry in the templates.

The best you can do is either a meta refresh or javascript redirect. I've seen people use each and they both work okay for real users. But don't count on value that counts with the search engines being passed.

[etzeppy]

Thanks for that explanation Randy. It makes sense now.

I have someone on the Blogger help forum telling me that if I use a meta refresh redirect, two very bad things will happen:

1) Search engines will view this a duplicate content and penalize the indexing of the destination URL

2) The Blogger anti-spam bot will detect the redirect and flag both the original and destination URLs as spam blogs.

I understand that a 302 redirect will not push the old indexing to the new URL, which is fine. But will it do anything to damage the future indexing of the new URL? You probably can't answer #2 but I have trouble believing that will happen either.

[Randy]

Well, grain of salt in what you believe from what that person told you.

1) Search engines will view this a duplicate content and penalize the indexing of the destination URL

If they told you that they don't know what they're talking about, at least where the search engines are concerned. The truth is the search engines do not penalize for duplication. At least not with the type you're talking about with moving a blog from one location to another. The absolute worst the search engines would do is filter one or the other, so that only one address will show up on any single results page. That's it. No penalty.

On the second point, I can't answer that one. I've never actually used blogger since I prefer to simply purchase a domain or use one I've already purchased and put blogs up that way. Gives me more control than using a platform like blogger. You know, control to do things like 301's if I decide to move things.

Someone here (was it Ian?) did a bit of a study and asked some questions of search engine reps to try to come up with some rules if you had to use a meta refresh instead of proper 301's. Mainly because reps from some search engines were indicating in things they said a few years back that they could sometimes treat a meta refresh as if it were a 301 and pass value. I'm going totally from memory here, but I believe the key, according the the search engine reps, was the number of seconds that elapsed in the meta refresh. The shorter the elapsed time the better, if memory serves.

So if you're stuck with a meta refresh a zero second would be best, at least where the search engines are concerned. I have no clue if blogger has any problems with this sort of thing, but it would surprise me if they do. People have been moving their blogs around for years, though the move I've seen most often is to move a blogger blog off of their platform and to its own domain.

[etzeppy]

Thanks again Randy. Great input as always.

[robmarketshare]

Could the Duplicate issue not be solved by placing a rel=canonical on all Blogger/Blogspot pages ?

( and keep your PR also?)

At least it does "feel" better then redirecting with a refresh to me

[Jill]

Could the Duplicate issue not be solved by placing a rel=canonical on all Blogger/Blogspot pages ?

Don't know if you have access to the HEAD section on Blogger. Also, I think this thread may have been before there was such a thing as the canonical link element.

[robmarketshare]

As I understand Head section would be accessable .
And cross domain canonicals are NOW accepted , so why not pick up on an "older" topic rather then to start a new one ?

Edited by robmarketshare, 09 October 2010 - 06:22 PM.