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Q: Proper Redirect in HTML ( Answered 3 out of 5 stars,   3 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Proper Redirect in HTML
Category: Computers > Programming
Asked by: abouttime-ga
List Price: $5.00
Posted: 18 Jun 2004 15:10 PDT
Expires: 18 Jul 2004 15:10 PDT
Question ID: 363154
We have a business that has been selling wholessale watches since 1952
and we also have a website (www.abouttime.com). We have a individual
page for each brand of watch we sell. I have created new watch brand
pages with new URL's to replace my old watch brand pages. For example
using one watch brand and the old page (old url) and the new page (new
URL) would be like this;

http://www.abouttime.com/elini.html   this is the one of the old Elini
watch brand pages

http://www.abouttime.com/elini-watches.html     this is one of the new
Elini watch brand pages

From this brand I have removed all associated links within my website
to the old brand page (http://www.abouttime.com/elini.html) and now
have all links pointing to the new brand page
(http://www.abouttime.com/elini-watches.html). It has been like this
for months and usually google captures my changes within a week. The
isssue is that I cannot get google to replace my listings within the
search engine with my new page (new url). I have read that I need to
create a 301 redirect on the old page to the new page. So this is what
I am asking;

What should I exactly do to fix this issue? I would prefer to use HTML
code that I can cut from the answer of this question and paste into my
site. Is it a 301 redirect that I need and what exactly should the
code me that I can paste into my site code to have this redirect work?
If it is not a 301 redirect what exactly should I do?

Thank you
Answer  
Subject: Re: Proper Redirect in HTML
Answered By: palitoy-ga on 19 Jun 2004 01:59 PDT
Rated:3 out of 5 stars
 
Hello Abouttime

The easiest way to solve this issue is to add a <meta> tag to the top
of your http://www.abouttime.com/elini.html page.  This can be done by
adding this following line in the <head> section of your elini.html
page:

<meta http-equiv="refresh"
content="0;url=http://www.abouttime.com/elini-watches.html" />

The "0" in the above line means the user is immediately redirected to
the elini-watches.html page.  This means that anyone who visits the
old page will now automatically be redirected to the new one.

An alternative method is available if your website is running on the
Apache webserver.

First you need to check with your webhost that you have the mod_alias
module installed (most set-ups do have this installed) and that you
have access to the .htaccess file.  If the mod_alias module is not
available, the mod_rewrite module would also work (this is more
powerful).

You then need to add this line to your .htaccess file:

Redirect permanent elini.html http://www.abouttime.com/elini-watches.html

This will permanently redirect anyone who enters elini.html in their
URL to elini-watches.html with a 301 redirect.  Like robertskelton-ga
said this is not done at the HTML level but at a server level.  In my
opinion this is a better way of achieving what you want to do than by
using the <meta> tag above.

Further advice on using mod_alias can be found here:
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_alias.html
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_rewrite.html

If you have any questions regarding this subject please ask for
clarification and I will do my best to help.

Request for Answer Clarification by abouttime-ga on 19 Jun 2004 10:59 PDT
With the method you have told me (using the meta tag version), will
google now realize that I have a new page to replace my old page in
the search engine? I ask this because the old page is now on page 1 of
google for the search term Elini watches or Elini and I know that the
new page should be even better?

please advise?

Clarification of Answer by palitoy-ga on 19 Jun 2004 11:13 PDT
It will not make Google re-search the page but any visitors who do go
to that page will automatically be redirected to the new page without
noticing anything.

In the meantime you should resubmit the
http://www.xxx.com/elini-watches.html page to the Google Add Url page
at: www.google.com/addurl.html

Clarification of Answer by palitoy-ga on 19 Jun 2004 11:16 PDT
I should point out that the second method I highlighted will make
Google realise you have changed the content.  This is because the
server will change the URL to the new URL before it gives any of the
content to the Google spider.

Request for Answer Clarification by abouttime-ga on 19 Jun 2004 14:26 PDT
I have many many brand pages which I have updated to a new URL
address. Asking my server company to insert the server code which you
guys provided for every one of these pages does not seem like a viable
option but I can do all the work and insert the HTML redirect code you
guys gave me (which I have already done for the elini page which I
have been uning in my examples. The main point I am trying to
understand is:

Will google ever drop the old brand page such as
www.abouttime.com/elini.html and index in the new brand page such as
www.abouttime.com/elini-watches.html without me resubmitting every one
of these pages. I know that the google spider "spiders" my site quite
often and picks up the changes I make to my pages but the google
spider has not been removing the old elini page and replacing it with
my new elini page even though it has visited me many times in the past
month.

Please advise... thanks

Clarification of Answer by palitoy-ga on 20 Jun 2004 01:53 PDT
Whilst the old elini.html page still exists Google will continue to
spider it as it has it in its index of pages to spider.
abouttime-ga rated this answer:3 out of 5 stars

Comments  
Subject: Re: Proper Redirect in HTML
From: robertskelton-ga on 18 Jun 2004 22:52 PDT
 
A 301 redirect is not done at HTML level, but rather in a file on your server.

It seems to me that Google updates content much more frequently than
links. Waiting will work fine. The benefits of the new file names
won't occur until Google updates links.
Subject: Re: Proper Redirect in HTML
From: terje-ga on 28 Jun 2004 02:06 PDT
 
palitoy-ga  says, "You then need to add this line to your .htaccess file:"

Well, that .htaccess file can be uploaded to your web page directories
by you, so you don't have to involve your webhost to create the 301
redirect.

This is provided that mod-alias is installed, and .htacces is enabled
by your webhost.
Subject: Solving the google problem...
From: vellmont-ga on 28 Jun 2004 06:58 PDT
 
When google indexes a site it looks for a file in the root directory
called robots.txt to determine what files shouldn't be indexed.  If
you want the old pages to be removed from googles directory simply put
an entry for each page in the robots.txt file.  See more information
about robots.txt <a href="http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html">here</a>

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