301 permanent redirect

using the .htaccess

[spud01]

I have read post like ==> www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/6486.htm and gleaned info on how to go about changing the old url showing i google to the new url.

My .htaccess has
# Send a redirect from our old file to our new file
Redirect index.htm http://www.not-a-real-url.com/index.htm

and it's placed in the old sites root directory.
The redirect works fine, and I also tried what annej
said add <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> , but I still get
--> Status: HTTP/1.1 302 Found
- from the tool found here http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/servercheck.cgi

When wouldlike to get '301 Moved Permanently'

Any have any ideas?

[hetzeld]

Claus,

I don't believe any bot would "follow" a 301 or 302 redirect, as there is nothing to follow. ;)

The caller asks for pageA and, if this one is redirected, receives pageB instead without having to "follow" anything.

The only difference is in the page header the bot receives. The 301 header will instruct the bot that the requested page has a new address. All the major bots understand this quite common procedure and act accordingly.

I recently changed the directory structure of part of my site, and all bots have corrected their links to show the new URLs. It took some time and, for a few weeks, I had both URLs in the index. GoogleBot was one of the faster to show the new URLs in the index.

Dan

[claus]

That's comforting, i have never had any bad experiences myself but a couple of posts mentioned problems, and with all the changes going on at Google, i sure wouldn't like this to become a problem as well, as i personally use redirects whereever appropriate.

To follow or not to follow... well, we could have a long discussion about that ;) anyway, sorry if you feel that i mess with the terms, i'm sure the meaning was clear anyway :)

/claus

[xlcus]

dandaman wrote:
Interesting what you are doing there. Are you saying you (conveniently) turn on 301 by adding that http header plus a new location header, but at the same time leave the page intact.

I don't leave the page intact as it would probably be ignored anyway. In effect I'm sacrificing the indexing of one page so that a new page will be crawled by Googlebot straight away, because I know that the sacrificed page will be crawled fairly soon again anyway.

[xlcus]

claus wrote:
the 301 redirect happens at the server level - that is before the page is returned to the browser

There are types of redirects that happen at the server level, but a 301 redirect isn't one of them.

For a 301, the browser receives a header when it requests the page at the old location, and this header tells it where the new location is.

[Stujoe]

I did a permanent through htaccess about a month or so ago for a bunch of pages and they have now been totally changed over in google. The new urls are there and the old ones are gone.

[xlcus]

hetzeld wrote:
The caller asks for pageA and, if this one is redirected, receives pageB instead without having to "follow" anything.

That's only true if the redirect is an internal redirect, ie.

RewriteRule /oldpage.html /newpage.html

If the redirect flag is used to get a 301 or a 302 redirect, ie.

RewriteRule /oldpage.html /newpage.html [R]

Then a header is sent to the browser with the new location.

[claus]

Damn, you guys are sooo obsessed with wording ;)

>> For a 301, the browser receives a header when it requests the page

- and that header is set where? and comes from where? it isn't set in the browser now is it? ;) Btw. thanks for the "internal"-post - i didn't bother, it's too hot here :)

/claus

[dandaman]

Am I getting slightly confused here!?

In effect I'm sacrificing the indexing of one page so that a new page will be crawled by Googlebot straight away, because I know that the sacrificed page will be crawled fairly soon again anyway.

I previously thought 301 is giving up the old page altogether. Whereas 302 is just temporary moved causing google to either regard both pages, basically saying "hey, browser you can soon expect this page to be back here." 301 is safe, as you in fact substitute a page, but 302 is risky because google could classify it as spam algo-wise if it feels like it.

Perhaps, a 301 just works the way you want it because you do it just briefly. In practice, it seems that 301 causes google only to retry ... aeeeh lets say 1-2 times, whereas the typical 404 can have google around on the abandoned page for up to 4-6 times as a quick guess.

WhatDoYouGuys think?

[claus]

Well if you continue to link internally to a page that has been 301-redirected, i suppose that the link will be followed again at some point. It's a creative way of using a 301 as a 302 and in the process getting another site spidered. It's seems like an alternative way of submitting a new site (in stead of just linking to it from the page) but i don't know if the process is faster, perhaps xlcus has tested the difference in speed?

/claus

[willybfriendly]

I've found that the 64.68 crawlers will not follow 301 redirects after no matter how many attempts.

I did a 301 redirect back in May, just in time to be hammered by Esmerelda. Lost virtually all the old links. Have worked hard and managed to get the new URL up to a high PR4 or low PR5 (depends on the DC that one looks at).

With the latest update in backlinks I was pleasently surprised to see an old link show up. I know that the link in question poiints to the old URL, so, I can say that in my experience the above quote is not always true. It just takes patience.

WBF

[xlcus]

claus wrote:It's seems like an alternative way of submitting a new site (in stead of just linking to it from the page) but i don't know if the process is faster, perhaps xlcus has tested the difference in speed?

I've had new pages crawled and properly appearing in SERPS within a few days using this technique.

It's especially useful when you're trying to get a completely new site indexed... One that you haven't had time to get many back-links to yet.

I sometimes sit there while Google is heavily crawling one of my high PR sites, and set the redirect to each of the pages on a new site, one by one.

When Google was doing monthly updates, this was a very good way of sneeking a new site into the next update and not having to wait for another whole month.

[spud01]

My 301 redirect implementation (learned from this thread) on an old url took abit longer that people have experience here. Round about 2-1/2 months.

But it worked!