How have these urls been generated?

[Gemini23]

on a website of mine... where also all in one seo plugin is... the following example domain structure existed

with the permalink structure of
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great-day

in order to get rid of the 'blog' implication (as it wasn't a blog at all) I moved the folder contents to /somethingmoreappropriate/

some old posts I just let go to 404 and others I redirected to the new folder... same post numbers etc....

However.... I am now seeing in Google Search results...

this type of url...
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/?p=1234 - which is the 'basic' version of the permalink of
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great-day

BUT
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great-day
is being 301 redirected to
/somethingmoreappropriate/index.php/1234/have-a-great-day

and works fine...

I am scratching my head as to how these new urls have been created...

maybe something like... when the content was moved the aioseo stopped working on the old content and perhaps for a brief time the old content had no seo'd peramlink structure....

answers on a postcard?

[lucy24]

It certainly sounds as if a redirect went missing. So they're getting the naked form of the URL instead of the prettified version. You can readily test it by entering the same address yourself-- or clicking the search-engine link. See if you land on the page without getting redirected.

The two htaccess files, for old domain and new, should be almost identical. The only difference is that the final rewrite, from pretty URL to real source of content, will of course only happen on the new site. All external redirects should go in tandem.

It should be noted that if you're using any well-known CMS, google probably knows exactly what lies behind the ordinary URL. And they'll ask for it just to see if they get a page. (Disclaimer: I just made that up out of the clear blue sky.)

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Wordpress tries to do a best guess as to what URL the visitor wanted and it 301's them there.

examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great-day
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great-day.
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great-day..
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great-da
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great-d
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great-
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-great
examplewebsitedotcom/blog/index.php/1234/have-a-grea
etc, etc

ALL of these will 301 to the original page, which if you remove blog/ is yet another redirect. The urls aren't being created, they actually exist because your server doesn't return a proper 404 for them. When Google finds a url it never forgets it and will return indefinitely.

Scrapers, aggregation sites and webmasters who don't double check for typos can all create malformed URLs so if your site redirects those instead of returns a 404 or 410 then you may see them appear in places like webmaster tools or analytics.

IS THIS A PROBLEM? Yes, and no. Yes because you don't want all of these 301's and malformed urls out there when they could be avoided but no because Google knows it's wordpress and sees it happening on all Wordpress sites.

There is a way to disable automatic redirects but it hasn't been shown to improve situations like yours much after the fact, if at all. Prevention is your best policy because once it happens it's hard to clean up. Just make sure your visitors have a good experience, don't fret about the phantom urls too much otherwise.

[Gemini23]

Many thanks for the above replies it is appreciated