Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?
-
Hi,
Newbie alert!
I need to set up 301 redirects for changed URLs on a database driven site that is to be redeveloped shortly.
The current site uses canonical header tags. The new site will also use canonical tags.
Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new?
Given that the purpose of canonicals is to indicate our preferred URL, then my guess is that's what I should use. However, how can I be sure that Google (for example) has indexed the canonical in every case?
Thx in anticipation.
-
The most accurate way is to do it manually. Doing a site:YOURDOMAIN.com in Google will alert you to most of the ugly URLs you want to get rid of.
-
Thanks for that David . . . makes sense.
Can you recommend any tools to help with this job or is it still mostly a manual process?
Cheers.
-
"Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new?"
Any URL's that are indexed should be redirected to the correct version. For example if you have both a database URL and a canonical URL both indexed in search results, then they both should be sent to the correct version.
Also, having only canonical URLs in your submitted sitemaps will help to remove a lot of these, even without redirects.
-
Ok, here is my understanding regarding canonicals and how it works with redirect. 301 redirect means the old URL is shifting its all value and user to the new domain (unlike 302 that only derives traffic but contain the URL value to itself only).
Whereas Canonicals indicates Google the preferred version of the domain so theoretically if you use the canonicals on every page Google should pick the redirected page as 301 will take Google to the final destination anyways…
What will I do?
If Possible, I will map all the redirected URLs and remove canonicals from there just to be on the safe side but I don’t think having there will be much of a difference as Google as at least that smart.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Unsolved Temporary redirect from 302 to 301 for PNG File?
#302HTTP #temporaryredirect
Technical SEO | | Damian_Ed 0
Hi everyone, Recently I have faced a crawl issue with my media images on website. For example this page url https://intreface.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Horion-screen-side-2.png has 302 HTTP Status and the recommendation is to change it 301. I have read the article on temporary redirections here:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection?_ga=2.45324708.1293586627.1702571936-916254120.1702571936
but its not written here how to redirect in my HTML 1 image url not the landing page.
Screenshot 2023-12-15 at 11.02.40.png
I have messaged to MOZ Support but they recommended to go for the MOZ Community!
Screenshot 2023-12-15 at 11.06.02.png Could you assist me wit this issue please? I can reach HTTML of the necessary page and change what I need for permanent redirection but firstly I need to understand how to do that correctly.0 -
Product Variations (rel=canonical or 301) & Duplicate Product Descriptions
Hi All, Hoping for a bit of advice here please, I’ve been tasked with building an e-commerce store and all is going well so far. We decided to use Wordpress with Woocommerce as our shop plugin. I’ve been testing the CSV import option for uploading all our products and I’m a little concerned on two fronts: - Product Variations Duplicate content within the product descriptions **Product Variations: - ** We are selling furniture that has multiple variations (see list below) and as a result it creates c.50 product variations all with their own URL’s. Facing = Left, Right Leg style = Round, Straight, Queen Ann Leg colour = Black, White, Brown, Wood Matching cushion = Yes, No So my question is should I 301 re-direct the variation URL’s to the main product URL as from a user perspective they aren't used (we don't have images for each variation that would trigger the URL change, simply drop down options for the user to select the variation options) or should I add the rel canonical tag to each variation pointing back to the main product URL. **Duplicate Content: - ** We will be selling similar products e.g. A chair which comes in different fabrics and finishes, but is basically the same product. Most, if not all of the ‘long’ product descriptions are identical with only the ‘short’ product descriptions being unique. The ‘long’ product descriptions contain all the manufacturing information, leg option/colour information, graphics, dimensions, weight etc etc. I’m concerned that by having 300+ products all with identical ‘long’ descriptions its going to be seen negatively by google and effect the sites SEO. My question is will this be viewed as duplicate content? If so, are there any best practices I should be following for handling this, other than writing completely unique descriptions for each product, which would be extremely difficult given its basically the same products re-hashed. Many thanks in advance for any advice.
Technical SEO | | Jon-S0 -
Sudden drop in Rankings after 301 redirect
Greetings to Moz Community. Couple of months back, I have redirected my old blog to a new URL with 301 redirect because of spammy links pointed to my old blog. I have transfer all the posts manually, changed the permalink structure and 301 redirected every individual URL. All the ranking were boosted within couple of weeks and regained the traffic. After a month I have observed, the links pointed to old site are showing up in Webmaster Tools for the new domain. I was shocked (no previous experience) and again Disavowed all links. Today, all the positions went down for new domain. My questions are: 1. Did the Disavow tool worked this time with new domain? All the links pointed to old domain were devaluated? Is this the reason for ranking drop? Or 2. 301 Old domain with Unnatural links causes the issue? 3. Removing 301 will help to regain few keyword positions? I'm taking this as a case study. Already removed the 301 redirect. Looking for solid discussion.Thanks.
Technical SEO | | praveen4390 -
Simple 301 redirect a subfolder to another subfolder
Hi, I have a number of sub-folders that I have to move, each of which contains a number of files. subfolder A has files a, b & c subfolder B has files d, e & f
Technical SEO | | aactive
subfolder C has files g, h & i A, B & C folders need to be X, Y & Z Will the following work? RewriteRule ^subfolder-A/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-X/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-B/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/ [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^subfolder-C/* http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Z/ [R=301,L] will this result in visitors to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-B/f.html being redirected to http://www.domain.com/subfolder-Y/f.html? All on the same domain. in reality we are talking hundreds of sub folders and thousands of files so we don't want to have to reference every file individually in the htaccess. Thanks0 -
301 Redirect How Long until the juice passes through to new site
Hi Guys, Following on from a question i asked last week in regard to a 301 http://www.seomoz.org/q/301-redirect-have-no-ranking I was thinking that i had some kind of issue on the site, although i have gone over it with a fine tooth comb i cannot find any issue's and from the amount of reads the thread has had im sure if there was something obvious it would have been pointed out. So i am quite confident the 301 from site A to site B is fine and working as intended, so my question is how long should it take until the juice is passed From site A to Site B as its 9 weeks now and still down 85% on traffic and even text for my home page if copied into the search bar don't bring up my site Bing is fine and did not see any real traffic drops but Google is not giving me back the rankings i had prior Whenever i have done a 301 before the rankings pretty steady and i see no real loss in rankings but this time ... painful all changes in WMT made
Technical SEO | | kellymandingo
Canonical tag implemented
all Pages 301 and correct 200 response from the targeted page
Sitemap Updated
Many Links Changed from Old site to new (including DMOZ)
no Robots text Blocking directory's
Google crawling freely and regularly The strange thing is New content is indexed immediately and ranks easily, I added a page for my service in my local area and went straight to position 5 in Google however old existing content wont move, I tracked 150 keywords only 4 are top 75 Don't know what else to do so any advice would be much appreciated PS site is around 17k pages Paul0 -
Index.php and 301 redirect with Joomla
Hi, I'm running Joomla 1.7 with SEF on and I'm trying to do a htaccess redirect which fails. I have approximately 100 in effect so far and all working fine, but I have one snag. Index.php is not working as I need it to when it's redirected to www.myurl.com/ If I turn on index.php redirect to root using this code #index.php to root
Technical SEO | | NaescentAdam
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^myurl.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.myurl.com$
RewriteRule ^index.php$ "http://www.myurl.com/" [R=301,L] And then go to www.myurl.com/test.html I'm redirected to the homepage. I think this is because all pages are index.php in joomla. SEOMOZ and Google both think that index.php and root are duplicate pages. Does anyone have any advice for overcoming this? Thanks, Adam0 -
Will bad things happen if I cancel 301 site redirect?
Hi, please someone help! We have two identical websites, say A & B. Because of the not so good SEO establishment, site B was built and site A was 301 redirected to site B weeks ago. For some reasons, we have to reuse site A, which means we have to cancel the 301 redirection. (Sound a little crazy) So the question are: 1. Can we conduct the action? 2. If we cant, what's the reason? 3. If we can, what would be the best practice? Thanks for help in advance! Plus: we also CARE what would happen to site B if the 301 is cancelled? Will it grow healthy like a new site?
Technical SEO | | Squall3150 -
301 Redirect with an Exact Domain name Match
My Client had a site that ranked for a pretty competitive two word phrase, but for a variety of reasons had to transfer the site to a different domain name (with none of the previous keywords). We've 301'd everything just fine to the new site, but our traffic for that two word phrase, as well as related long tail traffic, is beginning to drop. Could the drop be related to something that we didn't do well in the transfer? Or is it due to the new domain name now not being an exact match? Sitenote question: Our Google Analytics is still set up for the former domain name and shows data just fine. Is there any reason to switch GA to the new domain? What are the pros/cons? Much thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | TrevorMcKendrick0