Redirects

Any way around?

[feeder]

Problem: High profile site uses a redirect. When you enter the url, it resolves to a sub-directory. Client doesn't want to have the site resolving to top level (don't know why as yet).

THe domain has over 2,000 links pointing to it, but I suspect they aren't being picked up because of the redirect. Correct?

Any way around this issue?

[shady]

This seems to be a standard with large firms - particularly corporates. If you look at the majority of banking websites, for example, around 80% use a redirect to a sub-page.

[Slade]

How is the redirect currently being accomplished? (javascript? meta-refresh?) If one of those, most likely Googlebot is stumped at the index page.

You could put text links on the non-redirected index page that point to the subdir, plus any other important links.(mini site-map)

Does anyone know the implications of a 'Temporary Document Moved' statement, to Google, or other SE's?

[feeder]

onLoad="location.replace subfolder"

[Slade]

That's a dead stop to google(and probably other SEs).

Leave it, if you can't talk them out of it, but put two links like I suggested above, and the bots should at least index the rest of the site.

[jdMorgan]

SLade,

Does anyone know the implications of a 'Temporary Document Moved' statement, to Google, or other SE's?

It means the document has moved temporarily, and will return to its former URL. Search engines will continue to request and list the old URL.

I always suggest a 301-Moved Permanently if you want the new URL to show and the PR to transfer. However, in this case, a 302 (or even a purely-internal file redirect) seems to be what the client wants.

feeder,
There are a lot of SE spiders with a lot of bugs. Google comes closest to handling everything properly, IMO. But others may not handle the distinction between 301 and 302, so you might want to put up a couple of test cases on the site and see what happens.

Jim

[feeder]

Thanks guys. I intend to do my best to talk them out of it, so wish me luck. I'm stuck between the marketing department (who know nothing) and the IT department (who think they know everything, but in actuality know nothing)

Not sure I follow this:

I always suggest a 301-Moved Permanently if you want the new URL to show and the PR to transfer. However, in this case, a 302 (or even a purely-internal file redirect) seems to be what the client wants

How is this achieved? Is it a server side configuration?

[Slade]

The HTTP protocol has facilites for describing certain types of situations. These are sent to the user-agent(browser or bot) as Header messages.

200 Everything's cool, here comes the page you requested.
301 Document permanently moved.
302 Document temporarily moved.
304 Not Modifed. (the document hasn't changed since you called it last)
404 Document not found.

I was suggesting sending a 302, as it would tell the user-agent to go to this new location to find the page. I am basing this on the idea that it shouldn't mess up any existing links to your website.