Google Not Seeing My 301's
-
Good Morning!
So I have recently been putting in a LOT of 301's into the .htaccess, no 301 plugins here, and GWMT is still seeing a lot of the pages as soft 404's. I mark them as fixed, but they come back.
I will also note, the previous webmaster has ample code in our htaccess which is rewriting our URL structure. I don't know if that is actually having any effect on the issue but I thought I would add that. All fo the 301's are working, Google isn't seeing them.
Thanks Guys!
-
Yea, I cleaned all that stuff up! This website was a mess.
Anyway, back to the .htaccess, I have no idea what they are being used for.... but we are actually in luck!
I was doing a little research and I came across something interesting.... Not only is that the original file that our old webmaster pulled from, but that's the updated version with 2 sets of entries commented out. Seems like a good place to start?
Thanks!
Here is the link, because it seems to not want to display properly.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/wp-super-cache-force-to-https
-
I think thats a good idea to try and comment them out to see if it makes a difference.
Oh wow, 45 slider images?? That's def got to be hurting your search rankings! Hopefully you've found some one better to manage your site. Let me know if you need any help, I've worked in the industry for quite some time now.
Good luck, and let us know if it still doesn't work after commenting.
-
Thank you! Sorry It took so long to get back to this!
I KNEW IT! I didn't put any of that in there, it was our previous webmaster that I replaced. There are so many things that keep stacking up...
He has 45 images in our homepage slider and wonders why our website loaded slowly.... and the slider was on every single page...
Anyway, I will try commenting things out until I can figure out exactly what's going on!
Thank you
-
Hmm, there's definitely way too much duplication going on in your .htaccess file. What exactly are the following pages used for?
- index-https.html
- index-https.html.gz
- index.html.gz
Each rewrite section seems to be set up for the pages above, including the last one for index.html. I presume it has something to do with supercache? I'd try consolidating the .htaccess file, as there are a lot of duplicate rules that can be combined. For example, the URIs, request method, etc are all the same in each section. However, in order to figure out what to consolidate and remove, we need to figure out what each of the rewrite pages are doing for your site.
You could always try commenting out each rewrite block at a time to see if its needed or not. I'm guessing your .htaccess has something to do with why Google cant access your site properly.
-
Yep they are working... I cant upload the file on here, just pictures of the file, and I don't want to copy and paste everything.
I will paste in the rewrite script which I have a feeling is redundant. It was put in by the previous webmaster.
BEGIN WPSuperCache
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
#If you serve pages from behind a proxy you may want to change 'RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on' to something more sensible
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.[^/]$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.//.$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} !^.(comment_author_|wordpress_logged_in|wp-postpass_).$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Wap-Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.(2.0\ MMP|240x320|400X240|AvantGo|BlackBerry|Blazer|Cellphone|Danger|DoCoMo|Elaine/3.0|EudoraWeb|Googlebot-Mobile|hiptop|IEMobile|KYOCERA/WX310K|LG/U990|MIDP-2.|MMEF20|MOT-V|NetFront|Newt|Nintendo\ Wii|Nitro|Nokia|Opera\ Mini|Palm|PlayStation\ Portable|portalmmm|Proxinet|ProxiNet|SHARP-TQ-GX10|SHG-i900|Small|SonyEricsson|Symbian\ OS|SymbianOS|TS21i-10|UP.Browser|UP.Link|webOS|Windows\ CE|WinWAP|YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2|iPhone|iPod|Android|BlackBerry9530|LG-TU915\ Obigo|LGE\ VX|webOS|Nokia5800). [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_user_agent} !^(w3c\ |w3c-|acs-|alav|alca|amoi|audi|avan|benq|bird|blac|blaz|brew|cell|cldc|cmd-|dang|doco|eric|hipt|htc_|inno|ipaq|ipod|jigs|kddi|keji|leno|lg-c|lg-d|lg-g|lge-|lg/u|maui|maxo|midp|mits|mmef|mobi|mot-|moto|mwbp|nec-|newt|noki|palm|pana|pant|phil|play|port|prox|qwap|sage|sams|sany|sch-|sec-|send|seri|sgh-|shar|sie-|siem|smal|smar|sony|sph-|symb|t-mo|teli|tim-|tosh|tsm-|upg1|upsi|vk-v|voda|wap-|wapa|wapi|wapp|wapr|webc|winw|winw|xda\ |xda-).* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{SERVER_NAME}/$1/index-https.html.gz -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) "/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{SERVER_NAME}/$1/index-https.html.gz" [L]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.[^/]$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.//.$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} !^.(comment_author_|wordpress_logged_in|wp-postpass_).$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Wap-Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.(2.0\ MMP|240x320|400X240|AvantGo|BlackBerry|Blazer|Cellphone|Danger|DoCoMo|Elaine/3.0|EudoraWeb|Googlebot-Mobile|hiptop|IEMobile|KYOCERA/WX310K|LG/U990|MIDP-2.|MMEF20|MOT-V|NetFront|Newt|Nintendo\ Wii|Nitro|Nokia|Opera\ Mini|Palm|PlayStation\ Portable|portalmmm|Proxinet|ProxiNet|SHARP-TQ-GX10|SHG-i900|Small|SonyEricsson|Symbian\ OS|SymbianOS|TS21i-10|UP.Browser|UP.Link|webOS|Windows\ CE|WinWAP|YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2|iPhone|iPod|Android|BlackBerry9530|LG-TU915\ Obigo|LGE\ VX|webOS|Nokia5800). [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_user_agent} !^(w3c\ |w3c-|acs-|alav|alca|amoi|audi|avan|benq|bird|blac|blaz|brew|cell|cldc|cmd-|dang|doco|eric|hipt|htc_|inno|ipaq|ipod|jigs|kddi|keji|leno|lg-c|lg-d|lg-g|lge-|lg/u|maui|maxo|midp|mits|mmef|mobi|mot-|moto|mwbp|nec-|newt|noki|palm|pana|pant|phil|play|port|prox|qwap|sage|sams|sany|sch-|sec-|send|seri|sgh-|shar|sie-|siem|smal|smar|sony|sph-|symb|t-mo|teli|tim-|tosh|tsm-|upg1|upsi|vk-v|voda|wap-|wapa|wapi|wapp|wapr|webc|winw|winw|xda\ |xda-).* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{SERVER_NAME}/$1/index.html.gz -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) "/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{SERVER_NAME}/$1/index.html.gz" [L]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.[^/]$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.//.$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} !^.(comment_author_|wordpress_logged_in|wp-postpass_).$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Wap-Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.(2.0\ MMP|240x320|400X240|AvantGo|BlackBerry|Blazer|Cellphone|Danger|DoCoMo|Elaine/3.0|EudoraWeb|Googlebot-Mobile|hiptop|IEMobile|KYOCERA/WX310K|LG/U990|MIDP-2.|MMEF20|MOT-V|NetFront|Newt|Nintendo\ Wii|Nitro|Nokia|Opera\ Mini|Palm|PlayStation\ Portable|portalmmm|Proxinet|ProxiNet|SHARP-TQ-GX10|SHG-i900|Small|SonyEricsson|Symbian\ OS|SymbianOS|TS21i-10|UP.Browser|UP.Link|webOS|Windows\ CE|WinWAP|YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2|iPhone|iPod|Android|BlackBerry9530|LG-TU915\ Obigo|LGE\ VX|webOS|Nokia5800). [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_user_agent} !^(w3c\ |w3c-|acs-|alav|alca|amoi|audi|avan|benq|bird|blac|blaz|brew|cell|cldc|cmd-|dang|doco|eric|hipt|htc_|inno|ipaq|ipod|jigs|kddi|keji|leno|lg-c|lg-d|lg-g|lge-|lg/u|maui|maxo|midp|mits|mmef|mobi|mot-|moto|mwbp|nec-|newt|noki|palm|pana|pant|phil|play|port|prox|qwap|sage|sams|sany|sch-|sec-|send|seri|sgh-|shar|sie-|siem|smal|smar|sony|sph-|symb|t-mo|teli|tim-|tosh|tsm-|upg1|upsi|vk-v|voda|wap-|wapa|wapi|wapp|wapr|webc|winw|winw|xda\ |xda-).* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{SERVER_NAME}/$1/index-https.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) "/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{SERVER_NAME}/$1/index-https.html" [L]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.[^/]$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^.//.$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !.=.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Cookie} !^.(comment_author_|wordpress_logged_in|wp-postpass_).$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Wap-Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Profile} !^[a-z0-9"]+ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.(2.0\ MMP|240x320|400X240|AvantGo|BlackBerry|Blazer|Cellphone|Danger|DoCoMo|Elaine/3.0|EudoraWeb|Googlebot-Mobile|hiptop|IEMobile|KYOCERA/WX310K|LG/U990|MIDP-2.|MMEF20|MOT-V|NetFront|Newt|Nintendo\ Wii|Nitro|Nokia|Opera\ Mini|Palm|PlayStation\ Portable|portalmmm|Proxinet|ProxiNet|SHARP-TQ-GX10|SHG-i900|Small|SonyEricsson|Symbian\ OS|SymbianOS|TS21i-10|UP.Browser|UP.Link|webOS|Windows\ CE|WinWAP|YahooSeeker/M1A1-R2D2|iPhone|iPod|Android|BlackBerry9530|LG-TU915\ Obigo|LGE\ VX|webOS|Nokia5800). [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_user_agent} !^(w3c\ |w3c-|acs-|alav|alca|amoi|audi|avan|benq|bird|blac|blaz|brew|cell|cldc|cmd-|dang|doco|eric|hipt|htc_|inno|ipaq|ipod|jigs|kddi|keji|leno|lg-c|lg-d|lg-g|lge-|lg/u|maui|maxo|midp|mits|mmef|mobi|mot-|moto|mwbp|nec-|newt|noki|palm|pana|pant|phil|play|port|prox|qwap|sage|sams|sany|sch-|sec-|send|seri|sgh-|shar|sie-|siem|smal|smar|sony|sph-|symb|t-mo|teli|tim-|tosh|tsm-|upg1|upsi|vk-v|voda|wap-|wapa|wapi|wapp|wapr|webc|winw|winw|xda\ |xda-).* [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{SERVER_NAME}/$1/index.html -f
RewriteRule ^(.*) "/wp-content/cache/supercache/%{SERVER_NAME}/$1/index.html" [L]</ifmodule>END WPSuperCache
BEGIN WordPress
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule>END WordPress
-
For the redirected URLs that GWMT is throwing a 404 error for, can you access them directly in your browser? I'd double check a few random links that Google is saying doesnt exist, and then from there I'd look into the .htaccess. It would be helpful if you could provide us with the .htaccess file here.
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
-
Canonical's, Social Signals and Multi-Regional website.
Hi all, I have a website that is setup to target different countries by using subfolders. Example /aus/, /us/, /nz/. The homepage itself is just a landing page redirect to whichever country the user belongs to. Example somebody accesses https://domain/ and will be redirected to one of the country specific sub folders. The default subfolder is /us/, so all users will be redirected to it if their country has not been setup on the website. The content is mostly the same on each country site apart from localisation and in some case content specific to that country. I have set up each country sub folder as a separate site in Search Console and targeted /aus/ to AU users and /nz/ to NZ users. I've also left the /us/ version un-targeted to any specific geographical region. In addition to this I've also setup hreflang tags for each page on the site which links to the same content on the other country subfolder. I've target /aus/ and /nz/ to en-au and en-nz respectively and targeted /us/ to en-us and x-default as per various articles around the web. We generally advertise our links without a country code prefix, and the system will automatically redirect the user to the correct country when they hit that url. Example, somebody accesses https://domain/blog/my-post/, a 302 will be issues for https://domain/aus/blog/my-post/ or https://domain/us/blog/my-post/ etc.. The country-less links are advertised on Facebook and in all our marketing campaigns Overall, I feel our website is ranking quite poorly and I'm wondering if poor social signals are a part of it? We have a decent social following on Facebook (65k) and post regular blog posts to our Facebook page that tend to peek quite a bit of interest. I would have expected that this would contribute to our ranking at least somewhat? I am wondering whether the country-less link we advertise on Facebook would be causing Googlebot to ignore it as a social signal for the country specific pages on our website. Example Googlebot indexes https://domain/us/blog/my-post/ and looks for social signals for https://domain/us/blog/my-post/ specifically, however, it doesn't pick up anything because the campaign url we use is https://domain/blog/my-post/. If that is the case, I am wondering how I would fix that, to receive the appropriate social signals /us/blog/my-post/, /aus/blog/my-post/ & /nz/blog/my-post/. I am wondering if changing the canonical url to the country-less url of each page would improve my social signals and performance in the search engines overall. I would be interested to hear your feedback. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | destinyrescue0 -
How can a recruitment company get 'credit' from Google when syndicating job posts?
I'm working on an SEO strategy for a recruitment agency. Like many recruitment agencies, they write tons of great unique content each month and as agencies do, they post the job descriptions to job websites as well as their own. These job websites won't generally allow any linking back to the agency website from the post. What can we do to make Google realise that the originator of the post is the recruitment agency and they deserve the 'credit' for the content? The recruitment agency has a low domain authority and so we've very much at the start of the process. It would be a damn shamn if they produced so much great unique content but couldn't get Google to recognise it. Google's advice says: "Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content." - But none of that can happen. Those big job websites just won't do it. A previous post here didn't get a sufficient answer. I'm starting to think there isn't an answer, other than having more authority than the websites we're syndicating to. Which isn't going to happen any time soon! Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Reynolds0 -
What happens to a domain in SERPs when it's set to redirect to another?
We have just acquired a competing website and are wondering whether to leave it running as is for now, or set the domain to redirect to our own site. If we set up this redirect, what would happen to the old site in Google SERPs? Would the site drop off from results? If so, would we capture this new search traffic or is it a free for all and all sites compete for the search traffic as normal? Thanks in advance. Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao0 -
404's - Do they impact search ranking/how do we get rid of them?
Hi, We recently ran the Moz website crawl report and saw a number of 404 pages from our site come back. These were returned as "high priority" issues to fix. My question is, how do 404's impact search ranking? From what Google support tells me, 404's are "normal" and not a big deal to fix, but if they are "high priority" shouldn't we be doing something to remove them? Also, if I do want to remove the pages, how would I go about doing so? Is it enough to go into Webmaster tools and list it as a link no to crawl anymore or do we need to do work from the website development side as well? Here are a couple of examples that came back..these are articles that were previously posted but we decided to close out: http://loyalty360.org/loyalty-management/september-2011/let-me-guessyour-loyalty-program-isnt-working http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mark-johnson-speaks-at-motivation-show Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
Getting out of Google's Penguin
Hi all, my site www.uniggardin.dk has lost major rankings on the searchengine google.dk. Went from rank #2-3 on important keywords to my site, and after the latest update most of my rankings have jumped to #12 - #20. This is so annoying, and I really have no idea what to do. Can it cause bad links to my site? In that case what will I have to do? Thanks in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Xpeztumdk
Christoffer0 -
Is it possible for a multi doctor practice to have the practice's picture displayed in Google's SERP?
Google now includes pictures of authors in the results of the pages. Therefore, a single practice doctor can include her picture into Google's SERP (http://markup.io/v/dqpyajgz7jkd). How can a multi doctor practice display the practice's picture as opposed to a single doctor? A search for Plastic Surgery Chicago displayed this (query: plastic surgery Chicago) http://markup.io/v/bx3f28ynh4w5. I found one example of a search result showing a picture of both doctors for a multi doctor practice (query: houston texas plastic surgeon). http://markup.io/v/t20gfazxfa6h
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CakeWebsites0 -
Canonical URL's - Do they need to be on the "pointed at" page?
My understanding is that they are only required on the "pointing pages" however I've recently heard otherwise.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DPSSeomonkey0 -
Does Google crawl the pages which are generated via the site's search box queries?
For example, if I search for an 'x' item in a site's search box and if the site displays a list of results based on the query, would that page be crawled? I am asking this question because this would be a URL that is non existent on the site and hence am confused as to whether Google bots would be able to find it.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pulseseo0