undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Let your business shine with Listings AI
    Moz Local

    Let your business shine with Listings AI

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Removing URL Parentheses in HTACCESS

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Removing URL Parentheses in HTACCESS

Technical SEO
2
6
2.8k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • JaredMumford
    JaredMumford last edited by Nov 7, 2012, 10:35 PM

    Im reworking a website for a client, and their current URLs have parentheses. I'd like to get rid of these, but individual 301 redirects in htaccess is not practical, since the parentheses are located in many URLs.

    Does anyone know an HTACCESS rule that will simply remove URL parantheses as a 301 redirect?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • JaredMumford
      JaredMumford last edited by Nov 26, 2012, 6:35 PM Nov 26, 2012, 6:35 PM

      I thought I'd come back and re-post the solution in case this shows up in SERPs or anyone other Moz members are looking for this answer (courtesy Noah Wooden of Izoox). HTACCESS:

      <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On

      # Strip set of opening-closing parenthesis from URL and 301 redirect.
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [()]+
          RewriteRule ^(.)[(]+([^)])[)]+(.*)$ /$1$2$3 [R=301,L]</ifmodule>

      Remember to put this in the proper 'order' on your htaccess file if you are doing any other redirecting. The code above 301 redirects URLs with parentheses into the exact same URL minus the parentheses.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,19 days
      • JaredMumford
        JaredMumford @JaredMumford last edited by Nov 8, 2012, 2:43 AM Nov 8, 2012, 2:43 AM

        thanks Merlin - Ill have their programmer try this.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Amsplash
          Amsplash @JaredMumford last edited by Nov 8, 2012, 12:57 AM Nov 8, 2012, 12:57 AM

          Ok,

          having looked at the site I would recommend that the changes are done via server side. I assume the htaccess file is been used to to parse category/subcategory/productname to a controller. Within that controller if the product is found clean the product name with the function below test it against the given url and do a 301 redirect to the cleaned name if they do not match

          function clean_name($string) {    $non_acceptable = '#[^-a-zA-Z0-9 ]#';    $string = preg_replace($non_acceptable, '', $string);    $string = trim($string);     $string = preg_replace('#[-_ ]+#', '-', $string);     return $string;  }

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • JaredMumford
            JaredMumford @Amsplash last edited by Nov 7, 2012, 11:27 PM Nov 7, 2012, 11:27 PM

            Hi Merlin  - thank you.

            Here is an example:

            www.domain-name.com/category1/subcategory/product-name-details-(model-number)-length

            needs to change to:

            www.domain-name.com/category1/subcategory/product-name-details-model-number-length

            Any suggestion would be great. Their programmer is having trouble creating a rule.

            Thanks in advance

            Amsplash JaredMumford 2 Replies Last reply Nov 8, 2012, 2:43 AM Reply Quote 0
            • Amsplash
              Amsplash last edited by Nov 7, 2012, 10:55 PM Nov 7, 2012, 10:55 PM

              I have 1 or two suggestions. Could you provide an example of the URL? This will allow me to give a more definiive  solution

              JaredMumford 1 Reply Last reply Nov 7, 2012, 11:27 PM Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              1 out of 6
              • First post
                1/6
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              Browse Questions

              Explore more categories

              • Moz Tools

                Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

              • SEO Tactics

                Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

              • Community

                Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

              • Digital Marketing

                Chat about tactics outside of SEO

              • Research & Trends

                Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

              • Support

                Connect on product support and feature requests.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • RaquelSaiz

                Same URL for languages sub-directories

                Hi All, I have a main domain and 9 different subdirectories for languages,  example: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page-uk.html www.example.com/es/page-es.html we are implementing hreflang tags for the languages, but we are thinking to get rid of the dashes on the languages URL: -uk or -es, so it will be: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page.html www.example.com/es/page.hrml would this be a problem? to have same page names even if they are in different subdirectories? would we need to add canonical tags, at lease for the main domain URLs? www.kornferry.com/page.html Thank you, Rachel

                Technical SEO | Sep 17, 2018, 5:25 AM | RaquelSaiz
                0
              • SamKlep

                301 redirect syntax for htaccess

                I'm working on some htaccess redirects for a few stray pages and have come across a few different varieties of 301s that are confusing me a bit....Most sources suggest: Redirect 301 /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html or using some combination of: RewriteRule + RewriteCond + RegEx I've also found examples of: RedirectPermanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html I'm confused because our current htaccess file has quite a few (working) redirects that look like this: Redirect permanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html This syntax seems to work, but I'm yet to find another Redirect permanent in the wild, only examples of Redirect 301 or RedirectPermanent Is there any difference between these? Would I benefit at all from replacing Redirect permanent with Redirect 301?

                Technical SEO | Jun 24, 2019, 9:03 AM | SamKlep
                1
              • Tylerj

                How do I customize Magento product urls?

                I would like my product urls to be /category/manufacturer/name/part#. This would be the only url the item uses and how the product is accessed. It would also be used for product feeds. My first attempt was to use https://amasty.com/magento-unique-product-url.html This creates a single url but I can not customize it. Sometimes it selects the manufacturer and sometimes the category. My second attempt was with https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/custom-product-urls-seo.html I have it installed but it doesn't change the urls. Has anyone been able to do this successfully?

                Technical SEO | Jan 18, 2017, 1:12 PM | Tylerj
                0
              • DutchG

                Removed Product page on our website, what to do

                We just removed an entire product category on our website, (product pages still exist, but will be removed soon as well) Should we be setting up re-directs, or can we simply delete this category and product 
                pages and do nothing? We just received this in Google Webmasters tools: Google detected a significant increase in the number of URLs that return a 404 (Page Not Found) error. We have not updated the sitemap yet...Would this be enough to do or should we do more? You can view our website here: http://tinyurl.com/6la8 We removed the entire "Spring Planted Category"

                Technical SEO | May 16, 2015, 3:42 AM | DutchG
                0
              • theLotter

                Should the date be included in news URLs

                My website is not a news or magazine site, but we do have a news section updated 2-3 times a week with industry related news. We are working on a new structure for the URLs.
                Should the date be included in the URL? From this article from Google I understand that as long as we submit a news sitemap it doesnt matter whether or not numbers are included in the URL, correct? https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/68323?topic=11665

                Technical SEO | Jul 29, 2013, 8:22 AM | theLotter
                0
              • briankb

                Landing Page URL Structure

                We are finally setting up landing pages to support our PPC campaigns. There has been some debate internally about the URL structure. Originally we were planning on URL's like: domain.com /california /florida /ny I would prefer to have the URL's for each state inside a "state" folder like: domain.com /state /california /florida /ny I like having the folders and pages for each state under a parent folder to keep the root folder as clean as possible. Having a folder or file for each state in the root will be very messy. Before you scream URL rewriting :-). Our current site is still running under Classic ASP which doesn't support URL rewriting. We have tried to use HeliconTech's ISAPI rewrite module for IIS but had to remove it because of too many configuration issues. Next year when our coding to MVC is complete we will use URL rewriting. So the question for now: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to one URL structure over the other?

                Technical SEO | Oct 13, 2012, 2:03 AM | briankb
                0
              • Kennethskonto

                Cyrillic letter in URL - Encoding

                Hi all We are launching our site in Russia. As far as I can see by searching Google all sites have URLs in latin letters. Is there a special reason for this? - It seems that cyrillic letters also work. My technical staff says that it might give some encoding problems. Can anyone give me some insight into this? Thanks in advance.. / Kenneth

                Technical SEO | Apr 21, 2020, 9:57 AM | Kennethskonto
                0
              • AmericanOutlets

                Singular vs plural in urls

                In keyword research for an ecommerce site, I've found that widget, singular gets a lot more searches than widgets, plural AND is much less competitive. Is it better for SEO purposes to have the URLs (and matching title tags) in the catalog as /brass-widget.html, /steel-widget.html, etc., or /brass-widgets.html, etc.? I'm worried that a) searches for widgets will pass by the singular urls but not vice versa, and b) the singular form will strike visitors as bad grammar. Any advice?

                Technical SEO | Feb 8, 2012, 5:47 PM | AmericanOutlets
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.