chriscounter07
asked on
Should I 301 redirect URL's with variables?
I am quickly approaching a task that will need doing at some point. I will be redirecting users accessing all content from one website to another domain altogether and with a slightly different URL structure. To be brief, here's the difference:
old url
http://mysite.RU/mycatalog/experts-exchange-free-hats-p-1234.html
new url
http://mysite.com/experts-exchange-free-hats-p-1234.html
Now my question is what happens when I have a variable URL like this?
http://mysite.RU/mycatalog/experts-exchange-free-hats-p-1234.html?page=2&sort_by=price
where page=2 is the second page (and not indexed by google) and sort_by=price is just that (again not indexed).
Using canonical linking I have google only indexing the main page - please note I may haven't got the specifics right but that's not important for this Q.
Should I write the variables in htaccess? I estimate each URL to have perhaps 4 possibilities in filtering the content plus how ever many pages it has. If each page has 4 possibilities then that is a lot of redirecting!!
Do I really need to do this in your expert opinions?
old url
http://mysite.RU/mycatalog/experts-exchange-free-hats-p-1234.html
new url
http://mysite.com/experts-exchange-free-hats-p-1234.html
Now my question is what happens when I have a variable URL like this?
http://mysite.RU/mycatalog/experts-exchange-free-hats-p-1234.html?page=2&sort_by=price
where page=2 is the second page (and not indexed by google) and sort_by=price is just that (again not indexed).
Using canonical linking I have google only indexing the main page - please note I may haven't got the specifics right but that's not important for this Q.
Should I write the variables in htaccess? I estimate each URL to have perhaps 4 possibilities in filtering the content plus how ever many pages it has. If each page has 4 possibilities then that is a lot of redirecting!!
Do I really need to do this in your expert opinions?
Yes this is a common problem. The following page has a nice summary of this issue and solutions to it :
http://searchengineland.com/google-lets-you-tell-them-which-url-parameters-to-ignore-25925
Let me know if you have any questions left after reading that page.
http://searchengineland.com/google-lets-you-tell-them-which-url-parameters-to-ignore-25925
Let me know if you have any questions left after reading that page.
Even though you are using the canonical link tag, you are still going to want to do redirects. The reason for this is link juice. if there is any link value associated with a page, you really want to do a 301 to pass most of the value associated with the URL.
When you do this I would also change the canonical link tag to point to the new page on the new domain.
When you do this I would also change the canonical link tag to point to the new page on the new domain.
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Whichever way you choose to do it, I definitely would not worry about redirecting sorting variables in the URL, nor would I worry about redirecting pages that are not indexed.
ASKER
@gwkg
I've done this:
Redirect 301 /mycatalog http://mysite.com
But I might now look at dhwake's comment as it just seems to work TOO well right now. Google isn't currently indexing any of my variables e.g. sort_by=price though
I've done this:
Redirect 301 /mycatalog http://mysite.com
But I might now look at dhwake's comment as it just seems to work TOO well right now. Google isn't currently indexing any of my variables e.g. sort_by=price though
ASKER