ISAPI Friendly URL testing document - comments welcome

[sunnyseptember]

Following on from my previous post ( [webmasterworld.com...] ), I have now gone away and created a test document that goes through what i would need to test for the ISAPI friendly url rewriter tool.

Any comments or things I should also consider:

1) Check that old category IDs map to new category IDs where appropriate some departments with * will have sub categories that are completely new so no redirect has been added

Dept description ¦ OLD URL ¦Redirected URL ¦ 301 Redirect* (Y/N) ¦ Pass/Fail

Womenswear ¦ example.com/category.aspx?ID=12345 ¦ example.com/category.aspx?ID=98765 ¦ Y ¦ P
Menswear ¦ example.com/category.aspx?ID=34567 ¦ example.com/category.aspx?ID=67854 ¦ Y ¦ P

etc etc

2) Check that old dynamically generated links take you to the SEF URL

Dynamic URL ¦ SEF URL ¦ Pass/Fail
http://www.example.com/category.aspx?ID=12345 ¦ http://www.example.com/Womenswear/ ¦ P

3 Check if an item can be located if no category can be found for an item

If no category/sub category id has been found can the following URL A display a product page and redirect to the friendly URL shown in B?

A) http://www.example.com/productdetails.aspx?itemno=PRODUCT

B) http://www.example.com/DEPARTMENT/SUBCATEGORY/PRODUCT/

4) Run a search engine spider simulator

This will ascertain how a search engine spider will index www.example.com check that the links on the development website that are outputted into this file are of the SEF URL format.

Check that output of the spider simulator shows the department/category/product pages correctly.

5) Check how 404 and 500 errors are shown?

URL to test ¦Notes (What HTTP Status code was returned)¦ Pass/Fail
http://www.example.com/content.aspx?content=thispagedoesntexist ¦ 200 ¦ Fail

http://www.example.com/contentdoesnotexist.aspx?cntcode=help ¦ 404 ¦ Pass

Currently it has been found that page not found are not showing a 404 errors. The worry is that these are redirected to the homepage and may be considered as duplicate content as the link the person clicked on such as above

6) discount codes
- We have a number of promotion codes that are driven by users clicking banners/ad’s etc which should resolve correctly to the SEF URL but with the promotion code intact, as well as any tracking codes. Below is a list of urls that need testing, these have both a tracking element in them and without. Need to test both http and https for these links. [/b]

http://www.example.com/CODE
http://www.example.com/default.aspx?code=CODE
http://www.example.com/?code=CODE
http://www.example.com/category.aspx?ID=12345&code=CODE
http://www.example.com/productdetails.aspx?id=12345&itemno=PRODUCT&code=CODE
http://www.example.com/default.aspx?code=CODE&originator=referral&source=google
http://www.example.com/?code=CODE&originator=referral&source=google

[example.com...]
[example.com...]
[example.com...]
[example.com...]
[example.com...]
[example.com...]
[example.com...]

7) Links used via email newsletters - We send out email newsletter that have a url with tracking, need to ensure these resolve correctly to a SEF friendly URL with the promotion code and tracking parameters intact.

URLs in eshot ¦ Notes ¦ Pass/Fail
http://www.example.com/category.aspx?ID=12345&code=CODE&email=CODE&originator=email&source=CODE_MainImg ¦

8) PPC - Adding parameters after a SEF URL
Can parameters still be added the end of the new SEF URL and see them persist beyond any URL rewrite/redirect? Pages that a user ends up in through google still have the parameters. You can do a quick check by adding "?param_anything=blobby" - ie doesn't need to be valid param, Check in google analytics if the parameters have been passed through
URL to test ¦ Notes ¦ Pass/Fail
http://www.example.com/Womenswear/?originator=referral&source=Blah ¦

http://www.example.com/womenswear/outdoor-coats/?orinator=referral&source=Blah

9) Hack the URL
-Go to a friendly URL such as http://www.example.com/Help/About-Us/
and add in /(A(abc))/ between help and about to give:
http://www.example.com/Help/(A(abc))/About-Us/
With IIS, anytime you install an ISAPI filter, you break all of the default behaviors of the server. Need to accommodate for everything that could occur from your httpd.ini file. That means taking every URL and hacking it until you are certain that you've got all the proper server headers, content, etc. being served based on the request. Also check the following URLs[/b]

http://www.example.com/sub/sub/product/
http://www.example.com/sub/sub/product
http://www.example.com/sub/sub/produc
http://www.example.com/sub/sub/produ
http://www.example.com/sub/sub/prod
http://www.example.com/sub/sub/pro
http://www.example.com/sub/sub/pr
http://www.example.com/sub/sub/p

What happens at each level of the URL?
What server responses and content are being returned to the visitor?
Is it possible to interject something into the URI and have it resolve (return a 200 status).
All sorts of security issues to deal with.
*By doing such an attack a competitor can interject something into the URL and it will resolve as a 200 status. Thus is there a possibility that search engines could interpret the above pages as duplicate content

10) Ensure that no upper/lower case issues are created
If the following request is made for Page.html and page.html on IIS, both URLs would serve the same content and lead to “duplicate content”
We need to ensure that all SEF URLs are displayed in lower case with no casing.
Google seems to index them all thus possibly splitting page rank and link equity between them.

11)How does schema handle incorrectly doubled forward slashes eg:
http://www.example.com/department//sub-department/product/

12) Ensure that http://www.example.com is being indexed and not example.com as this could be seen as duplicate content
Need to ensure we don’t have any canonical issues as all URLs that lead to the homepage should be 301 redirected to the canonical URL

Our homepage can be accessed via:

http://example.com
http://example.com/
http://example.com/default.aspx
http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/default.aspx

Above would leads to duplicate content issues and split Page Rank / link equity.

One of these should be our canonical URL... You should determine a set of rules for creating canonicals. This typically means deciding on things like

1) www vs non-www2) showing trailing '/' for folders that contain default documents (index.asp or default.asp) or hiding the trailing /
3) showing the default document name for folders that contain default documents or hiding the default document name.

Thus the following 301 redirects should exist:

http://example.com ---> 301 redirect ---> http://www.example.com/
http://example.com/ ---> 301 redirect ---> http://www.example.com/
http://example.com/default.aspx ---> 301 redirect ---> http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com CANONICAL URL - NO REDIRECT REQUIRED
http://www.example.com/ ---> 301 redirect ---> http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/default.aspx ---> 301 redirect ---> http://www.example.com/

[edited by: Receptional_Andy at 12:17 pm (utc) on Oct. 22, 2009]

[edited by: tedster at 9:55 pm (utc) on Oct. 22, 2009]
[edit reason] Please use example.com - it can never be owned [/edit]

[tedster]

If you get that much nailed down, you are in good shape. One suggestion would be to add a redirect if a link requests the url using an IP address rather than the domain name.

[sunnyseptember]

Essentially when we do a 301 redirect I have been told that

1) We may experience a minor shift/shuffle in the Rankings
2) We may encounter the mentioned shift/shuffle for a short period of time (a few weeks)
3) We will see some SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) listings disappear (the .com listings)
4) We may notice that our PR (via the Google Toolbar!) disappears, lowers etc.

Is it true that none of the above is anything to panic/worry about. I have been told it simply means Google is recalculating and updating it's info?