Cleaning up duplicate titles - is 500 too many 301s?

[pavlovapete]

Hi,

in an effort to clean up our shopping cart which is blipping in GWT for duplicate titles I am just about to add 500+ 301 redirects to our site.

Problem stems from a case-insensitive server, a case-inconsistent shopping cart script and a case-ignorant webmaster.

Frankly I am worried - will Google think I'm trying to game them somehow by suddenly cleaning up what has become a mighty mess? Will I loose/ degrade the votes of incoming links? I have become paranoid about appearing "unnatural" in any way.

My plan is to capture any uppercase incoming requests and 301 redirect them to the lowercase version. Given that the situation has existed for some time I'd expect Googlebot to keep requesting the old uppercase URLs well into the future.

I'd appreciate any mentoring.

Cheers

[tedster]

Five hundred 301 redirects of this kind doesn't sound like too many to me -- unless you only have only a low number of urls indexed. However, coding single URL redirects one by one is not a preventative measure, it's only a kind of piecemeal fix that requires eternal vigilence.

If your "case-insensitive" server is Microsoft IIS, I'd suggest considering the purchase of a third-party plug-in called ISAPI Rewrite. It essentially gives you .htaccess style control on IIS and you can force all URLs to be lowercase with one relatively simple rule.

As you may know, we almost never allow the mention of commercial products here. If this app had even one true equivalent on the market, I would recommend "one of that type". As far as I know, ISAPI Rewrite is one of a kind, and almost a required survival tool for the IIS website.

[g1smd]

Yes, add the redirects so that all your URLs are all lower case.

But, do make sure that all of your internal links are updated to only link to the lower case URLs.

Get the redirects in first, and make sure that you get all the internal linking fixed over the next month or so.

Don't worry that the old URLs will show in the SERPs for a very long time. Those entries will still be bringing traffic, and the visitor will be seeing the correct URL in their browser, so if they paste your URLs as links elsewhere they will now always be pasting the correct version.

Search engines will take care of the rest. Check where you are early in the new year.

At that time, check your server logs and identify the main incoming external links that are still hitting the redirect and see if you can get at least a few of them amended to the correct format.

[pavlovapete]

Thanks tedster, thanks g1smd

I feel less paranoid and more confident.

Cheers

[g1smd]

Xenu LinkSleuth is your friend. Use it early. Use it often. :-)