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.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • 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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. 301 doesn't redirect a page that ends in %20, and others being appended with ?q=

    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.

    301 doesn't redirect a page that ends in %20, and others being appended with ?q=

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    7
    4360
    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.
    • Brocberry
      Brocberry last edited by

      I have a product page that ends /product-name**%20** that I'm trying to redirect in this way:

      Redirect 301 /products/product-name%20 http://www.site.com/products/product-name

      And it doesn't redirect at all. The others, those with %20, are being redirected to a url hybrid of old and new: http://www.site.com/products/product-name**?q=old-url**

      I'm using Drupal CMS, and it may be creating rules that counter my entries.

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

        I know this is an old thread, but I actually spotted this issue while trying to fix it myself. I was able to fix it by using quotes and a literal space. So for example, instead of

        RewriteRule ^/products/product%20name$ http://www.site.com/products/new-url [R=301,L]

        use

        RewriteRule "^/products/product name$" http://www.site.com/products/new-url [R=301,L]

        Hope that helps.

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

          I've managed to 301 everything except that pesky %20 url, perhaps because of the %20 or perhaps because that's also the only one in a folder.

          Here's what's worked for simple urls such as www.site.com/old-page

          RewriteRule ^old-page$ http://www.site.com/new-page  [R=301,L]

          But the same format for the %20 hasn't worked:

          RewriteRule ^/products/product-name%20$ http://www.site.com/products/new-url [R=301,L]

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • Brocberry
            Brocberry @Brocberry last edited by

            I think this is the culprit:

            Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.

            RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico 
            RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

            At the moment,
            Redirect 301 /old-page http://www.site.com/new-page

            creates
            www.site.com/new-page?q=old-page

            I have tried the 301s both before the CMS rule and after it, without success.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • StreamlineMetrics
              StreamlineMetrics @Brocberry last edited by

              Hmmm... I was going to also suggest trying replacing the %20 with an actual space -

              Redirect 301 "/products/product-name " http://www.site.com/products/product-name

              Now that you say none of the redirects are working as expected, did you try adding the 301 redirects above the Drupal rules in your .htaccess file? Can you paste the contents of your .htaccess?

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Brocberry
                Brocberry @StreamlineMetrics last edited by

                Thanks for the reply. I tried it but it didn't work, but I given incorrect info in the question, which is now corrected. I had said other 301 were working fine when in fact they weren't. Those without %20 are redirecting to an odd hybrid of urls.

                After some searching, I think this has something to do with the drupal CMS and the rules it creates in htaccess.

                StreamlineMetrics Brocberry 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • StreamlineMetrics
                  StreamlineMetrics last edited by

                  Try putting it in quotes -

                  Redirect 301 "/products/product-name%20" http://www.site.com/products/product-name

                  Let me know if that doesn't work...

                  Brocberry 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

                  • MikeBlue1

                    301 Redirect - Rank Recovery Examples?

                    Hi All, I recently did a 301 redirect. Page to Page and the notified google via its console. Its been 6 days since. The home page and one other high traffic page swopped out with the new domain on google search index with 3-4 drops in ranking for each. The rest of the sites pages have been indexed but still reflect the old domain when searched. Recently today my home page dropped even further to the second page of google index for the specific keyword. Can you share similar experiences and how long it took you to recover rank fully? and how long for all pages to swop out on google search's index? Regards Mike

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeBlue1
                    0
                  • BeckyKey

                    Paginated Pages Which Shouldnt' Exist..

                    Hi I have paginated pages on a crawl which shouldn't be paginated: https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs My crawl shows: <colgroup><col width="377"></colgroup>
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=2 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=3 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=4 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=5 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=6 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=7 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=8 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=9 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=10 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=11 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=12 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=13 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=14 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=15 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=16 |
                    | https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/chairs?page=17 | Where is this coming from? Thank you

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
                    0
                  • Worthminer

                    Why Google isn't indexing my images?

                    Hello, on my fairly new website Worthminer.com I am noticing that Google is not indexing images from my sitemap. Already 560 images submitted and Google indexed only 3 of them. Altough there is more images indexed they are not indexing any new images, and I have no idea why. Posts, categories and other urls are indexing just fine, but images not. I am using Wordpress and for sitemaps Wordpress SEO by yoast. Am I missing something here? Why Google won't index my images? Thanks, I appreciate any help, David xv1GtwK.jpg

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Worthminer
                    1
                  • 94501

                    Better to 301 or de-index 403 pages

                    Google WMT recently found and called out a large number of old unpublished pages as access denied errors. The pages are tagged "noindex, follow."  These old pages are in Google's index. At this point, would it better to 301 all these pages or submit an index removal request or what? Thanks... Darcy

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 94501
                    0
                  • RosemaryB

                    Should we 301 redirect old events pages on a website?

                    We have a client that has an events category section that is filled to the brim with past events webpages.  Another issue is that these old events webpages all contain duplicate meta description tags, so we are concerned that Google might be penalizing our client's website for this issue.   Our client does not want to create specialized meta description tags for these old events pages. Would it be a good idea to 301 redirect these old events landing pages to the main events category page to pass off link equity & remove the duplicate meta description tag issue?   This seems drastic (we even noticed that searchmarketingexpo.com is keeping their old events pages).  However it seems like these old events webpages offer little value to our website visitors. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
                    0
                  • robotseo

                    How to set up 301 redirect for URL with question mark

                    I have encountered some issue with 301 redirect and htaccess file. I need to redirect the following url: http://www.domain.com/?specifications=colours/page/3 to: http://www.domain.com/colours The 301 redirect command I wrote in htaccess file is as follow: Redirect 301 /?specifications=colours/page/3 http://www.domain.com/colours And it doesn't work at the moment. What is the correct way to set up 301 redirect here? Your help will be sincerely appreciated!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robotseo
                    0
                  • Prime85

                    301 Redirect - What happens to backlinks

                    Hello... One of my sites is losing rankings in G. I received the webmaster notification of unnatural links... My question is, should i do a 301 redirect of every page on my site to a new domain? If so, do the backlinks (which i believe are causing my rankings to drop) carry over? How about the good backlinks? Also, what would happen to the rankings i currently have on page 1? Thanks

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Prime85
                    0
                  • pbhatt

                    301 Redirects After Company Acquisition

                    We recently acquired a company, and now we are going to redirect all of the pages on their site to their respective pages on our site. Do we need to keep the original pages on their site active? For how long? Ideally, we would like to redirect everything and remove the old site entirely so we don't have to pay to keep hosting it. Is this possible? Thanks!

                    Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pbhatt
                    1

                  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.