redirecting a redirect

[aidanfitz]

Hello

I have questions about 301 redirects.

At the moment we have redirects in place from old locations pages to new Location Pages.

We need to remove some of the location pages and redirect them to existing ones.

To simplify it if we look at it like this.

Present redirects in place
OLD1 redirected to New1
OLD2 Redirected to New2

I now need to redirect New1 to New2.

Question is do I change the redirect from

OLD1 redirected to New1
To
OLD1 to NEW2

The current redirects have been in place for over 4 months and Google has picked them up.

So the questions are

1. Can I change Permanent redirects once they are in place.
2. Can I redirect redirects which are currently in place.

Cheers

[Jean-Luc]

Originally Posted by aidanfitz

Present redirects in place
OLD1 redirected to New1
OLD2 Redirected to New2

I now need to redirect New1 to New2.

I would do this:
OLD1 redirected to New2
New1 redirected to New2
OLD2 redirected to New2

Jean-Luc

[aidanfitz]

cheers for that

I suppose the question is if a page has been permanently redirected (301) once, can you redirect it again or does google frown on this?

The situation is this:


(Around city) hotels old page REDIRECTED TO (Around city) hotels new page
(city) hotels old page REDIRECTED TO (city) hotels new page

we now want to redirect the around city hotels new page into the city hotels new page


so do we

redirect the around city hotels new page straight into the city hotels new page

or

redirect around city old page to city hotels new page (more direct)

I know this is confusing but we are stuck as to how to go about this.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Jean-Luc

I would do this:
OLD1 redirected to New2
New1 redirected to New2
OLD2 redirected to New2

Jean-Luc

Agree.

Originally Posted by aidanfitz

cheers for that

I suppose the question is if a page has been permanently redirected (301) once, can you redirect it again or does google frown on this?

The situation is this:


(Around city) hotels old page REDIRECTED TO (Around city) hotels new page
(city) hotels old page REDIRECTED TO (city) hotels new page

we now want to redirect the around city hotels new page into the city hotels new page


so do we

redirect the around city hotels new page straight into the city hotels new page

or

redirect around city old page to city hotels new page (more direct)

I know this is confusing but we are stuck as to how to go about this.

I can not answer for Google, but my experience is that redirecting redirects are a strong sign of spam / scam.

[nullvariable]

I would find it best to not redirect the same link more than once. In other words

OLD1 -> New2
OLD2 -> New2
NEW1 -> New2

as Jean-Luc says.

301 redirects imply that the link being redirected should no longer be used. In my experience this means that Google will generally replace the link for the original page with the link for the new page.

[Palindrome]

Hi

As already stated, you simply put in place a 301 redirect from new1 to new2. The other options are not viable.

[digga]

I don't know if this is what you want, but this is what I have done in a htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cgi-bin/links/old1\.fcgi [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cgi-bin/links/old2\.pl [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/cgi-bin/old3\.cgi
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^ID=([0-9]+)
RewriteRule .* http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/new\.fcgi [R=301,L]

[ddfrench]

Originally Posted by aidanfitz

So the questions are

1. Can I change Permanent redirects once they are in place.
2. Can I redirect redirects which are currently in place.

Cheers

Answers:
1. You can change the target of a 301 (the word "Permanent" is misleading, it does not mean "once")
2. You can redirect redirects, but this is inadvisable because you take a performance hit and reduce the reliability of serving the target page.

If you are redirecting A to B, and now you want to redirect A to C, why not simply change the content of B? This will minimize the disruptions with search engines.

[NetProwler]

>> Can I change Permanent redirects once they are in place.

"Permanent " here doesn't mean a long lasting entity. It simply refers to the type of redirection. There are some caveats in redirection:

1. Make sure that a server side redirection doesn't result in a loop. Set the .htaccess directive from the root. If you have many directories downstream, you may have a conflicting directives set. So read all the directives. Consolidate them and test them.

2. Many robots are deliberately configured to follow a limited number of redirection unlike browsers. Consider this scenario:

domain.com - > www.domain.com ( the site has implemented canonical resolution so a non-www reference redirects to www mode)

www.domain.com - > www.domain.com/ ( standard server redirection to serve the default at the / )

Assume that your index page actually redirects to the entry page of your CMS system -
www.domain.com/ -> www.domain.com/spip.php?lang=en

Many robots would give up after a certain number of redirection.

[brucet]

You basically have two alternatives:

Option 1 (Jean-Luc's recommendation)
OLD1 -> New2
OLD2 -> New2
NEW1 -> New2

Option 2
OLD1 -> New1
OLD2 -> New2
NEW1 -> New2

The only real difference is that Option 2 involves a two-step redirect, OLD1 -> New1 -> New2.

AFAIK redirecting a redirect won't necessarily cause a problem. But it's a habit worth avoiding, because you can accidentally create a circular redirect where eg A -> B -> C -> A. That can have interesting effects both on your server, and your visitors' browsers.

So I would definitely follow Jean-Luc's recommendation.

[effisk]

Additionally, you can read this:
Q&A from the JuneTune live chat - Google Webmaster Help | Google Groups

Specifically this part:

Q: Is there any limit on the number of redirections 301, a Web site?. In a large site, if you change the URL structure, is the optimum time to do it with 301? or is best done gradually
A (Matt Cutts): There's no per-page limit on the number of 301s you can do, so you could move 100K pages to 100K new location. However, if we see a really long chain of redirects, eventually we will decide to stop following the chain.

[ddfrench]

Originally Posted by NetProwler

>> Can I change Permanent redirects once they are in place.

"Permanent " here doesn't mean a long lasting entity. It simply refers to the type of redirection. There are some caveats in redirection:

1. Make sure that a server side redirection doesn't result in a loop. Set the .htaccess directive from the root. If you have many directories downstream, you may have a conflicting directives set. So read all the directives. Consolidate them and test them.

2. Many robots are deliberately configured to follow a limited number of redirection unlike browsers. Consider this scenario:

domain.com - > www.domain.com ( the site has implemented canonical resolution so a non-www reference redirects to www mode)

www.domain.com - > www.domain.com/ ( standard server redirection to serve the default at the / )

Assume that your index page actually redirects to the entry page of your CMS system -
www.domain.com/ -> www.domain.com/spip.php?lang=en

Many robots would give up after a certain number of redirection.

NetProwler nailed it.

Re the server possibly going into an endless loop; it won't. It will make one pass and if it reaches a prior point, it stops and issues an error message. You won't get your page.