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. Digital Marketing
    3. Web Design
    4. Display a message after 301 redirect.

    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.

    Display a message after 301 redirect.

    Web Design
    2
    5
    3072
    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.
    • WilliamBay
      WilliamBay last edited by

      I know this one is a little more technical than pure SEO, but it somewhat ties in.

      I'm redirecting 2 sites to one. The companies have combined, and I've imported all their content that has been created, and the url mapping is set up correctly.

      So it currently is set up like this:

      A.com --> C.com
      A.com/blogpost-1 --> C.com/blogpost-1

      B.com --> C.com B.com/blogpost-20 --> C.com/blogpost-20

      What i would like is some method a redirect when landing at C.com or C.com/blogpost-XX.

      And in turn display a message in a DIV so I can style it.

      And yes, I have nothing better to do on a Friday night 🙂

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JoshPugh
        JoshPugh @WilliamBay last edited by

        Ah sorry about missing the bracket.

        Yeah the ? query has to come at the very end, otherwise it interrupts the flow of the URL... So it should be C.com/blogpost-20?redirect=true

        There is lots you can do, but I understand that it may be a bit more work than you planned 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • WilliamBay
          WilliamBay @JoshPugh last edited by

          Thanks for this! It wasn't working for me initially, and asked around. looks like you missed a "]" in the first line. So it should be:

          if(isset($_GET['redirect'])){

          I was able to get it to work at the root domain. A.com --> C.com

          After getting this all sorted out though, I realize that I really wanted a pop up screen that could be closed, and that it would require me to spend even more time on it, and trying to add javascript as well. I decided to just scrap the idea.

          Another problem I had was that the ?redirect=true at the end of the URL, messed up the direct linking to subpages and posts as well. So instead of :

          C.com/blogpost-20 I would get C.com?redirect=true/blogpost-20.

          Since there is no such page, it just returned the contents from the home page.

          I appreciate your help though. It just seems like more effort that I want to put in, and probably more than the client wants to pay for.

          JoshPugh 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • JoshPugh
            JoshPugh last edited by

            P.S. Ensure that you have rel="canonical" on the new URL because otherwise you won't be getting proper SEO for the pages with the ?redirect=true

            🙂

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • JoshPugh
              JoshPugh last edited by

              Hi William,

              Shouldn't be too hard. In that 301 redirect, add a GET query.

              i.e. A question mark after the URL in the redirect that says something like:

              http://www.new-url.com?redirect=true

              What this will mean is that on your NEW site, you can add a query like (if using PHP):

              if(isset($_GET['redirect')){

              if($_GET['redirect'] == 'true'){

              ?>

              You were redirected!

              }

              }

              Decoding this, it basically checks for a question mark in the url, and if it finds one, it adds the div with the class "redirected" and says something!

              Let me know if that didn't make sense!

              WilliamBay 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                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

              • paul-bold

                Should I Redirect Pagination?

                Working on a redirect map for a client moving platforms and they have all of their category pagination indexed - no canonical link and no rel next/prev's on any of them. Should I redirect the pagination pages to the main category page on the new platform? Or Should I allow the pagination to de-index itself type of thing? Thoughts and experience?

                Web Design | | paul-bold
                0
              • NachoRetta

                Spanish website indexed in English, redirect to spanish or english version if i do a new website design?

                Hi MOZ users, i have this problem. We have a website in Spanish Language but Google crawls it on English (it is not important the reasons). We re made the entire website and now we are planning the move. The new website will have different language versions, english, spanish and portuguese. Somebody tells me that we have to redirect the old urls (crawled on english) to the new english versions, not to the spanish (the real language of the firsts). Example: URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language English version. the other option will be redirect to the spanish new version, which the visitor is waiting to find. URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language Spanish version. What do you think? Which is the better option?

                Web Design | | NachoRetta
                0
              • jwanner

                How long should an old site redirecting to a new site remain activated on a server?

                Once I switch a site to a new domain (with links to corresponding/relative pages), will I have to keep the old site live forever for those links to work, or how long should I wait before I inactivate the old site on our server?

                Web Design | | jwanner
                0
              • DA2013

                Is there a way to redirect URLs with a hash-bang (#!) format?

                Hi Moz, I'm trying to redirect www.site.com/locations/#!city to www.site.com/locations/city. This seems difficult because anything after the hash character in the URL does not make it to the server thus cannot be parsed for rewriting. Is there an SEO friendly way to implement these redirects? Thanks for reading!

                Web Design | | DA2013
                0
              • soobumim

                Wordpress - redirecting tags

                I just ran a webmaster tool from Yoast SEO premium and notice I have a lot of problems with tags (restricted-robots-txt) For example : http://www.soobumimphotography.com/tag/wedding-group-photo/ Do I have to redirect to http://www.soobumimphotography.com/wedding-group-photo/ Should I do this to each and every posts Thank you

                Web Design | | soobumim
                0
              • edlondon

                Is it possible to redirect the main www. domain - but keep a subdomain active?

                Hi Mozzers, Quick question, which I hope one of you can answer... Let's say I have a website (i) www.example.com and on that a subdomain exists, (ii) subdomain.example.com. Let's say I want to change my main domain from www.example.com to www.newwebsite.com.  I'd 301 all content, use GWT to notify Google of a change of address etc etc. Having done that, is it still possible to keep the original subdomain active? So, even though www.example.com has been redirected / transferred to www.newwebsite.com, subdomain.example.com would still exist. If that is possible, what is the implication for Domain Authority?  On the one hand, I have transferred the main site (so DA from that will transfer to the new site); but part of that root domain is still active. Make sense?  Any answers? Thanks everyone...

                Web Design | | edlondon
                0
              • proptiger

                Redirects (301/302) versus errors (404)

                I am not able to convincingly decide between using redirects versus using 404 errors. People are giving varied opinions. Here are my cases 1. Coding errors - we put out a bad link a. Some people are saying redirect to home page; the user at least has something to do PLUS more importantly it does NOT hurt your SEO ranking. b. Counter - the page ain't there. Return 404 2. Product removed - link1 to product 1 was out there. We removed product1; so link1 is also gone. It is either lying in people's bookmarks, OR because of coding errors we left it hanging out at some places on our site.

                Web Design | | proptiger
                0
              • SheriGolla

                Optimal redirect configuration from a misspelled domain that we own.

                We have a handful of inbound links to www.t-chek.com (note the hyphen). Our normal site is www.tchek.com (no hyphen). We own both domains and have some sort of domain-wide redirect set up now. This works fine for traffic, but I suspect it's not optimal for SEO purposes. I came to this conclusion by looking in OSE and noticing that none of the inbound links to www.t-chek.com were also being attributed to www.tchek.com. 2 questions: Is it immediately evident what type of redirect I have in place now, or do I need to figure that out? Is the fix as simple as editing the .htaccess file on the hyphenated domain? I don't have direct control over the hyphenated domain, and I'd like to be able to know exactly what we need to do so I can request help from my IT department. I'd appreciate hearing your wisdom. Thanks!

                Web Design | | SheriGolla
                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
              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.