Redirecting Google Users

Getting users to my home page?

[colemanator]

How do I get my google search results to take the user to my homepage, instead of sending them to the page that was indexed for the particular search term?

Ex: Search Term: widgets for sale

My current result listing:
www.widgets.com/widgetsforsale.asp

I want the user to go to:
www.widgets.com

Or could you recommend another forum that may help.

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 11:05 pm (utc) on Dec. 17, 2002]
[edit reason] Split from a previous thread [/edit]

[JayC]

So you mean you want the user not to find the page that has the information he's searching for, but to be sent instead to your home page so he'll have to search again on your site to find the right page?

Just making sure that I'm following you...

I guess it wouldn't be too difficult to do a redirect that applies only when the visitor has a Google-based referrer string. To Google, though, you'll then be violating the "don't present different content to search engines than you display to users" guideline [google.com]. But of course, you won't be alone. :)

[Edit: typo corrected]

[edited by: JayC at 12:06 am (utc) on Dec. 18, 2002]

[jomaxx]

I'm pretty sure you can do this with a mod_rewrite in the .htaccess file, but it's a horrible idea. It defeats the whole idea of how a search engine works.

[gsx]

Could be classed as cloaking by some search engine.

Visitors will hit the back button (many will think you've changed the page and what they were looking for has now gone). I would do this immediately, or if it is a long page, hit control+F to search for a word I am looking for - if it's not there - goodbye!

[nativenewyorker]

Are you doing this because you run an adult website?

Perhaps you can set something up with a cookie. The cookie is given only by visiting the main page. If a visitor arrives at an interior page indexed by a search engine, they will not have the cookie and will be redirected to the main page.

This shouldn't be a violation of the SE's policies since the search engines need to hit the higher level links first before the sub-level links. The same would apply to your users.

As an example, Google search results link here to Webmasterworld threads. In order to read the messages, users are required to register first. This is not cloaking in my opinion.

Ted

[jomaxx]

I find this to be a questionable practice as well, but HOPEFULLY once they have registered, surfers continue to the page indexed by Google. Just dumping them at the home page would be less than helpful.

[piskie]

Google has worked long and hard to develop an algorithm that they consider takes the user to the information that they asked for. They won't like you undermining their relevance philosophy and if Google doesn't detect it, a competitor could report you.

Easy to achieve the divert but difficult to recover from PR0.

[BigDave]

nativenewyorker,

Google doesn't accept cookies. If you do not take that into account, you will always send googlebot to your home page.

[colemanator]

Its not an adult site or anything of that nature. I just wasnt sure if there was a meta tag setting that would cause only you homepage URL to be archived. I only want to send people to my homepage because I feel that they would receive more helpful information.

[Slade]

If that's the case, you just want to set a meta robots nofollow, or disallow everything except for your index page in your robots.txt

I agree with an earlier post, this kind of defeats the purpose...

[ALurkingFriend]

colemanator, Couldn't you just have good navigation to your home pages on all your subpages? Let the user go back if they want to and stay where they are when that's what they wanna do?

(I remember having search results at drkoop.com for a medical condition, but going to the page redirected me to their search page with the G query filled in?!?! And their search page wouldn't finf the same page that G did. Made me a fan of G's cache and turning off js. Bad. Really, really bad.)

[Marcia]

A Javascript redirect will work if it's not disabled in people's browsers, but if the page is ranking well and it's anywhere near competitive, chances are that someone ranking lower will turn you in on a spam report.

If people are finding you on a search, if it's a legitimate page it'll be what they're looking for, and the safest route is just having good navigation that's very clear and easy to get around.

If it's not a legitimate page and you get caught, you could be done for.

[colemanator]

How do you turn someone in on a spam report?

[jdMorgan]

Colemanator,

Start here [google.com] - Good Info!

Jim