How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect
-
Hi all I hope that someone can help....
How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect
The url in question is:
How can I fix multiple 404 errors with Wildcard htaccess redirect
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/location/uk-england/bedfordshire-weddings/franklin-park
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/deal/location/uk-england/chorley-weddings/curtis-bay
etc, going to http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business
the above is just a few examples, google webmaster is showing over 8.000 404 page not found errors.
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Denverish, thanks for your reply, been months since i looked at this problem. It has returned so trying to sort it out. the redirects mentioned did not work. so any suggestions.
The CMS allows for 301 redirects via a form; place old url at the top of the form and the new url at the bottom and save,
But as I am trying to create a wildcard 301 redirect, i am not sure what code to place in these fields..see pic
tai
-
Hi Tai, were you able to implement Matt's suggestions?
-
Hi Tai! Any update on this issue? Please let us know so we can help! Thanks.
Christy
-
Hi Matt, sorry for the delay in getting back.
Just working on your suggestions, I will let you know if it works
T
-
Using the redirectmatch directive to redirect the entire deal directory to deals should definitely work for your situation. You then just repeat for each - so for deals:
RedirectMatch 301 /deal/(.*) /deals/$1
-
Hi Matt,
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^listing/(.*)$ http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business/ [R=301,L]Did not work,
other urls flagged up in Google WM are/deal/ new: /deals/
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/deal/location/uk-england/buckinghamshire-weddings/newport-beach
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/deals/
thanks Matt
-
Hi Tai,
I understand what you are saying in regards to making it easier with all the different URLs, however you will need to specify some start point in terms of being one level down from the domain root else you are effectively placing a wildcard on the whole domain, which wouldn't work when you are still working on this domain. So you need to try to identify the few main category URLs such as /listing and so on in order to create a rule.
Did the redirect I give you work for all URLs apart from the one listed? It should have worked for that.
An alternative you can try is:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^listing/(.*)$ http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business/ [R=301,L] -
Hi Matt, thanks again.
Yes we are trying to redirect old urls to the relevant pages.
As we have so many old urls from old cms system which had different url structures, to do a wildcard to catch all 404s would be great. (wordpress plugin wp redirection achieves this http://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/)
RedirectMatch 301 ^/listing/.*$ http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business
But it did not redirect
http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/location/uk-england/essex-weddings
Thanks for your time on this.
Regards Tai
-
Hi Tai,
I had a look at your site homepage and from your examples I could see you have relative urls which can cause 404 errors and as you mentioned 8000 I thought this could be part of your problems - no domains in your main navigation links so /business rather than www.yourdomain.com/business in coding - so no base URL can cause this. I took one of your links you mentioned to check if your hrefs were relative.
Putting what I mentioned aside for a second do you just want anything that is /listing and /deal redirecting to /business?
Have you tried this for the listing example and repeat for the others such as /deal/:
RedirectMatch 301 ^/listing/.*$ http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business
-
Hi Matt, and thank you for your response.
Not sure if i understand the solution to this problem though. The http://www.5starweddingdirectory.com/listing/......./ are from old legacy urls, and we have many. I am not sure why google webmaster is still picking up these old urls. but having 8k old not found urls is a worry.
Regards Tai
-
You can fix this issue much easier than trying to sort out redirects in htaccess. You are coming across this issue because your site uses relative URLs rather than absolute.
Example:
A relative URL isn't tied to a base URL so:
/business
Absolute would be:
www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business
Using relative means that when you visit a page your link is relative to that location so if I was on
www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business and visited the same llink it would become
www.5starweddingdirectory.com/business/business unless redirected.
Having to fix this issue in htaccess can get messy for this and it would be much simpler to change your nav links in the template of your site. I checked this was the case in your sites source code to be certain and you definitely use relative URLs.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Solve Redirect Chains
I've gotten a few Redirect Issues that involve Redirect Chains, with the https:// version redirecting to the www. version and then redirecting to the right URL. Here is an example:
On-Page Optimization | | Billywig
Schermafbeelding 2021-12-07 om 11.04.32.png I've tried setting a direct redirect between the first and the last URL, but WordPress doesn't seem to allow that (it's overwritten). I've also tried checking the internal links to make sure that none of the links are the first one. They don't seem to be there. Does anyone have any tips on solving these Redirect Chains?0 -
How can I check spam score and non indexed links
Hi I am working on a project in which I have a local services website <a target="_self">www.thepcrrg.com</a> I want to be sure its links are getting indexed or not. Please help me.
On-Page Optimization | | Jioiebytt2 -
Can Google read this code?
I'm working on some basic on-page SEO content for a website within my company and I need some guidance as far as 1. whether Google can read the small amount of existing text (not optimized) and if it isn't spiderable, then 2. what code should be there instead. Here is the site: https://www.le-velgear.com/store/catalog The text I'm referring to is toward the bottom of the page (isn't it always?) and says this: Designed for a Thriving Lifestyle The Le-Vel Gear store is an extension of the LV Life, the Thrive product line, and the world's largest health and wellness Movement, which you helped create. Living a life you deserve includes looking good while showing the world your pride in being a Thriver...Check out all the new and incredible gear and tools and take your Thriving lifestyle to the next level!!! When I "View Source," I cannot see the text, however, the text is highlight-able with my cursor and I can see it when I "Inspect Element" in a container that says Thanks in advance for any help!
On-Page Optimization | | lizzyr0 -
Can't see the woods for the trees
Ok, I'm going be really cheeky here, so apologies in advance! We have this site www.simplychaise.co.uk and its not ranking anywhere in the top 50 for the term 'Chaise Longue' Moz has picked up a few issue with duplicate titles and a couple of 404's which I will fix shortly, It dosen't have any backlinks but I'm stumped as to why it isn't ranking higher than what it is, I'm not expecting 1st position but outside of the top 50 is something else. The site looks ok to me, but I think it might be a case of I've been looking at it so long that I can no longer see the wood for the trees. Could any kind hearted Mozer point me in the right direction here please, what am i missing? I'd greatly appreciate it, many thanks in advance for being so cheeky and well, useless! Jon
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-S0 -
How to do this 301 redirection
Hi there! I have two domains with the same content. Some guys in this forum posted that It would be convinient to do a 301 redirect from one ".com" domain to ".es" domain (my potential market). I just tried to set it up in the htaccess file but it dind't worked at all. Something like: redirect 301 http://wwww.domain.com http://www.domain.es I just configure in the webmaster tools the domain www.domain.com as preferred domain insted of http://domain.comThe same with the other domain. Any help? many thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Reverse 301 redirect - how will that work?
Hi We have done some testing where we have changed our URL to a new name and 301 redirected the old to the new. It has now been decided to go back to the old url again but is there an seo risk to this? Will all the inbound links that as redirected in the first change be lost or?
On-Page Optimization | | AndersDK0 -
Can you recommend a few resources for Yahoo SEO
We get very little traffic from Yahoo Search and it seems only 15%-20% of our pages are indexed by Yahoo and Bing although we do submit sitemaps to both of them. Do you have some tips or resources (articles, blogs, books) you could recommend for Yahoo Search optimization?
On-Page Optimization | | AEM130 -
301 internal redirects
Hello, I have a lot of low quality pages on my site, many of which have very similar URLs and cover similar topics. I want to tidy up my site by using 301 redirects as Rand suggests here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization 1. As a rough rule of thumb, how many internal 301 redirects is too many? 2. Can lots be to the homepage if they're relevant? (I could have as many as 30) Thanks, Kevin
On-Page Optimization | | KMack0