Forum Moderators: open
The page title and the description from the new domain show, but the URL is from the old domain.
The new domain is brand new.
The information on the new domain is unique to the new domain.
The redirect has been in place for about 10 days.
The redirect was implemented within 24 hours of the new content on the new domain being added.
The page title and description from the new domain in the SERPs are correct.
The URL is from the old domain.
I've checked the headers and they return a 301.
It looks like I've hijacked my own site with a 301.
(Fortunately, I know how to use a redirect, so when the old domain result is clicked, visitors (both of them) land on the new domain.)
Justin
[help.yahoo.com...]
If I understood your description correctly, a work-around might be to remove the redirect on the old home page, and redirect it to the new home page instead, leaving the other per-page redirects intact.
Jim
I thought permanent redirect would mean: 'we moved it to a new location, you can now find it here'. (Being a little silly, I didn't know there could be confusion over what 'permanently moved' meant. Of course I keep referring to the RFC and thinking a 302 is an Undefined Redirect, and a 307 is Temporary, but Yahoo! clearly states a 302 is Temporary, so the RFC must be incorrect.)
This seems a little like giving directions to the old coffee shop location, so when people follow them they can see the sign in the window stating, 'the coffee shop has moved and the new location is... blah', rather than just giving them the directions to the new location.
I wonder, does Yahoo! have anything in their TOS about not having, 'Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page.' in their index? (I think this is what I was trying to avoid.)
I guess they haven't edited their policy in a while. Maybe it should read:
'Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page, unless the other page is not on the same level as the page being redirected, then we would rather have pages dedicated to redirecting to another page included in our index, because it cuts down on end user confusion and provides a better visitor experience with more meaningful results to tell visitors they will be going to one location, when they will really be going to another.'
Justin
Edited: I'm normally grammatically incorrect for the 1st couple of edits.
While this probably improves the lot of sites on limited hosting, those who implement the HTTP protocols correctly are left scratching their heads wondering why things don't work as they should.
The bit about "pages dedicated to redirecting" has to do with so-called "doorway" pages -- hundreds of junk pages optimized for one or a few keywords or keyphrases, all linked and/or redirected to the "real" site. It was an early form of black-hat SEO. Since that's not what you're doing here, disregard that.
If you 301 redirect from your four non-home-pages on the old domain to one (or more) non-home-pages on the new domain, that should work as expected. I believe it is the old home page redirect to the new non-home-page that is giving you trouble here, based on case #2 shown in that Yahoo Help document.
Jim
I think it's a little silly to have standards anyway, it's not like the Internet is a long-term project or anything, and if people took some time to learn how to use it and know what the standards are it probably wouldn't work any better or anything.
Really, the whole thing will probably disappear tomorrow anyway, then our kids will be saying, 'Remember when you had that Internet thing, what was it like?', right?
I do wonder how many webmasters stay in a state of 'dis-information' because, when searching for 'information' about redirecting, the Yahoo! page is much more appealing to read than the RFC page (it's got neat little pictures and everything to show people how redirects work), so when a webmaster chooses to read Yahoo!, (wrongly assuming a search engine such as Yahoo! would present web standards as they are intended), they believe they are reading RFC Protocol, rather than Yahoo!'s mis-interpreted, out-dated version of the Protocol, and go on their way thinking they now know the answer?
I understand what you are noting about redirecting all other pages to the correct page and the home page to the home page, but, unfortunately, that would make the redirect off topic and add an unnecessary click for visitors, so I will go ahead and follow the standards, because they are the only thing I have to go by.
If Yahoo! would like to keep the old URL, it's their search engine and prerogative, so who am I to complain?
Justin
Of course there are probably 10,000,000 people who think the entire web got updated when they installed (or had installed for them) IE 7, and they got to see things closer to the way they were supposed to be seen.
I give, 302, although resulting in a 'Found' is defined as temporary.
Where I remember reading it was undefined I can't locate.
(I know I read it somewhere, and wish I could find it, so I could reference it, but I can't. Sorry. Possibly an older version of the RFC? Not sure. I'll keep looking and post again if I can find it.)
As of the introduction of HTTP 1.1 a true temporary code is a 307.
(I know I got that part correct.)
Justin
(It's not in the RFC 2616 or 1945 anywhere I can find, but it's been about a year since I looked at it, so I could have read 3 pages together and transposed in my mind fairly easily where the name came from.)
<end rant>
Use whatever code you like best, 302=Temporary, 307=Temporary I think I'll just use a 306 from now on.
Justin
I assume that was a jest, but let's be careful here for the sake of later readers: 306 is an "unused-reserved" code in HTTP/1.x. A properly-written client will default to the generic "3xx" class, and treat a 306 as a redirect. However, a poorly-written client may default to handling this as a 300-Multiple Choices response, and present the visitor with the content-body of the response rather than invoking automation redirection handling.
As this discussion indicates, there are plenty of poorly-written clients -- or those that can be called poorly-written if one insists that the specifications be followed to the letter...
Jim
It was a jest.
I figured I would take a few minutes and look dumb myself to save others the efforts, because it's about stupid to think you read something on one page that's obviously on another.
I've always thought if you're going to let people have an opinion here you should at least have some data to back it up, or an idea of what you are talking about, which I *thought* I did, but obviously I didn't.
Here's the reality: a 302 *used* to be '302 Moved Temporarily' (RFC 1945 - 1996 & 2068 - 1997), but is now '302 Found' (RFC 2616 - 1999) with a definition of moved temporarily, and in some places, is referred to as Undefined, (presumably because it is the default redirect status code), and although a 302 has it's own handling characteristics, is often handled as a 303 See Other, and should be used for HTTP 1.0 clients, rather than a 303, which is not exactly the way a 302 should be handled, but is obviously close enough for Internet work.
For some reason while writing this I keep thinking, 'the backbone of the system we all use has been in place for 8 years (10 if RFC 2068 HTTP 1.1 is taken in to account), and we still have to make adjustments for, and use codes for User Agents which only conform to 1996 standards... HUH? WOW!'
And most still only use HTTP 1.0 status codes, 301,302,404 when more precise codes have been in place for almost a decade.
I can't decide if I should get off the HTTP 1.1, 'It's been almost a decade since HTTP 1.0 was cool people, use the specific code', soap box and realize if it's been almost a decade and we haven't made the adjustments, we should probably just leave it alone...
Or if I should keep pointing out, 'Hey, I'm new, but it looks like they updated some of the stuff most people are using quite some time ago (like when Yahoo! was worth $475/share, a year after Google existed as a company, and long before most of us here even knew what WebmasterWorld was), don't you think we should go ahead and try it out?'.
Justin
