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
      • SEO Q&A
      • 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.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      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. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How do you 301 redirect URLs with a hashbang (#!) format? We just lost a ton of pagerank because we thought javascript redirect was the only way! But other sites have been able to do this – examples and details inside

    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.

    How do you 301 redirect URLs with a hashbang (#!) format? We just lost a ton of pagerank because we thought javascript redirect was the only way! But other sites have been able to do this – examples and details inside

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    9
    9769
    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.
    • DA2013
      DA2013 Subscriber last edited by

      Hi Moz,

      Here's more info on our problem, and thanks for reading!

      • We’re trying to Create 301 redirects for 44 pages on site.com.
      • We’re having trouble 301 redirecting these pages, possibly because they are AJAX and have hashbangs in the URLs.
      • These are locations pages. The old locations URLs are in the following format: www.site.com/locations/#!new-york and the new URLs that we want to redirect to are in this format: www.site.com/locations/new-york
      • We have not been able to create these redirects using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v.1.5.3.2.
      • The CMS is WordPress version 3.9.1
      • The reason we want to 301 redirect these pages is because we have created new pages to replace them, and we want to pass pagerank from the old pages to the new. A 301 redirect is the ideal way to pass pagerank.
      • Examples of pages that are able to 301 redirect hashbang URLs include http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles#!Saddles and https://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey.
      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JamesTDG
        JamesTDG last edited by

        The solution I came up with was:

        1. Create a list of all the source URLs you have, and all the destination URLs you want
        2. Create all the destination URL pages
        3. Work out what the Ugly versions of all hashbang (pretty) URLs should be and record them (ref: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/specification)
        4. Implement 301 Redirects for the Ugly URLs
        5. Deploy a Sitemap with Pretty URLs
        6. Submit Your Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools
        7. Wait for Google to re-index all your pages
        8. Check that the new URL(s) show up in Google search results too
        9. Clean up – Remove the pretty URLs from the sitemap

        Job done!

        I created a detailed page on this with examples on my blog at www.thedriversgarage.com/web-technology/redirecting-hashbang-urls-wix-urls/

        Disclaimer - Make your own enquiries and do your own tests.  I'm a pragmatist, I really don't care if this complies to standards.  It worked for me and that's all I cared about.  Google, etc. may process this stuff differently in the future. Do your own tests.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • spencerhjustice
          spencerhjustice @DA2013 last edited by

          I would like to point out that twitter is using javascript redirects not serverside redirects. If you disable javascript and try that url it will load the homepage/ your twitter feed and the url will stay the same.

          The second url doesn't seem to be properly redirecting as at least for me it just 301 redirects back to itself.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • spencerhjustice
            spencerhjustice @Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

            That's not true. Google is able to crawl and index properly setup ajax based pages like the one in question. Bing on the otherhand is not able to do so or at least not last time I checked.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Andy.Drinkwater
              Andy.Drinkwater @DA2013 last edited by

              That will teach me to skim read 😄

              Perhaps trying a different 301 plugin will help? Alternatively, you can pretty much redirect anything from within .htaccess.

              This page on Webmaster World might be worth reading.

              -Andy

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • DA2013
                DA2013 Subscriber last edited by

                Thanks for the responses!

                @Kevin: Our main concern here is getting back that lost page rank, since javascript redirects don't pass page rank. We used http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/ and _SEO Tools for Excel _to check whether the hashbang URL examples were using 301 redirects.

                The correct URLs are

                http://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey
                http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles/#!Saddles

                @iNetSEO

                These pages were indexed by Google before somehow, I suspect using escaped_fragment? the hashbang URLs would show up in search results

                Andy.Drinkwater spencerhjustice 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • KevinBudzynski
                  KevinBudzynski last edited by

                  With the JavaScript option, people who bookmarked the page will get redirected.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • Andy.Drinkwater
                    Andy.Drinkwater last edited by

                    The hash tag means that the page wont be indexed by Google and therefore, carry no page rank. It is like it is invisible. Just launch the new pages because Google will have never seen the current ones.

                    -Andy

                    spencerhjustice 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • KevinBudzynski
                      KevinBudzynski last edited by

                      I may be wrong, but I don't believe you can do this via a 301 redirect. How did you know the examples used a 301 redirect? The examples provided may have used JavaScript to do it (may not be the best, but can't think of any other option).

                      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

                      • MAdeit

                        Is there any benefit to changing 303 redirects to 301?

                        A year ago I moved my marketplace website from http to https. I implemented some design changes at the same time, and saw a huge drop in traffic that we have not recovered from. I've been searching for reasons for the organic traffic decline and have noticed that the redirects from http to https URLs are 303 redirects. There's little information available about 303 redirects but most articles say they don't pass link juice. Is it worth changing them to 301 redirects now? Are there risks in making such a change a year later, and is it likely to have any benefits for rankings?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAdeit
                        0
                      • BrandBuilder

                        New Site (redesign) Launched Without 301 Redirects to New Pages - Too Late to Add Redirects?

                        We recently launched a redesign/redevelopment of a site but failed to put 301 redirects in place for the old URL's. It's been about 2 months. Is it too late to even bother worrying about it at this point? The site has seen a notable decrease in site traffic/visits, perhaps due to this issue. I assume that once the search engines get an error on a URL, it will remove it from displaying in search results after a period of time. I'm just not sure if they will try to re-crawl those old URLs at some point and if so, it may be worth it to have those 301 redirects in place. Thank you.

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BrandBuilder
                        0
                      • EileenCleary

                        Javascript onclick redirects / porn sites...

                        We noticed around 7 websites which with domains that were just recently registered (with privacy protection). They are using our website keywords/titles and brand name and the sites are mostly porn / junk sites. They don't link to our website directly but use a javascript onclick redirect which is why we think we aren't seeing them in our backlinks report.  We've been in business for over 12 years and haven't come across sites like this before.  We recently lost our first page rankings for a few of our highest converting key phrases and have been digging in to possible causes. Just wondering if these sites could be impacting our results, and how to figure out if there are more like this? Examples: nesat.net
                        flowmeterdirectory.biz
                        finnsat.net
                        dotsjobs.net

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EileenCleary
                        0
                      • Angelos_Savvaidis

                        Multilingual Site and 301 redirection

                        Hey there awesome people of Moz I have this site that has many languages in it. The main language is English and my developer did the following www.example.com ( is the main site ) which redirects with a 301 to www.example.com/en if your geo location is supported by our languages then you will automatically be redirected to whatever language you have in your country but does the first language with is english have to 301 redirect to www.example.com/en ? I thought that the right way is to just leave /en at the root file. Thanks in advance

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis
                        0
                      • alecfwilson

                        For URLs that require login, should our redirect be 301 or 302?

                        We have a login required section of our website that is being crawled and reporting as potential issues in Webmaster Tools. I'm not sure what the best solution to this is - is it to make URLs requiring a login noindex/nocrawl? Right now, we have them 302 redirecting to the login page, since it's a temporary redirect, it seems like it isn't the right solution. Is a 301 better?

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alecfwilson
                        0
                      • CommercePundit

                        How to stop Google crawling after 301 redirect?

                        I have removed all pages from my old website and set 301 redirect to new website. But, I have verified old website with Google webmaster tools' HTML verification file which enable me to track all data and existence of pages in Google search for my old website. I was assumed that, Google will stop crawling and DE-indexed all pages after 301 redirect. Because, I have set 301 redirect before 3 months. Now, I'm able to see Google bot activity on my website with help of Google webmaster tools. You can find out attachment to know more about it. How can it possible & How Google can crawl removed pages? You can see following image to know more about it. First & Second

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
                        0
                      • djingel1

                        Any way to find which domains are 301 redirected to competitors' websites?

                        By looking at the work from an SEO collegue it became clear that his weak linkbuilding graph probably is not the cause for his good rankings for a pretty competitive keyword. (also no social mentions where found) I was wondering what it could be, site structure and other on page optimization factors seems to be ok and I don't think there will be exceptionally good or bad user behavior... Finally I looked at the competitors and found that they have more links, better content en better design, so I got a little stuck. The only reason I can think of is that he is doing 301 redirects (or is rel=canonical tags). Is there a way to trace these redirects back to the source in order to include this important variable in your competitor research? thnx

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djingel1
                        0
                      • AndreVanKets

                        Is it safe to redirect multiple URLs to a single URL?

                        Hi, I have an old Wordress website with about 300-400 original pages of content on it. All relating to my company's industry: travel in Africa. It's a legitimate site with travel stories, photos, advice etc. Nothing spammy about. No adverts on it. No affiliates. The site hasn't been updated for a couple of years and we no longer have a need for it. Many of the stories on it are quite out of date. The site has built up a modest Mozrank value over the last 5 years, and has a few hundreds organically achieved inbound links. Recently I set up a swanky new branded website on ExpressionEngine on a new domain. My intention is to: Shut down the old site Focus all attention on building up content on the new website Ask the people linking to the old site to my new site instead (I wonder how many will actually do so...) Where possible, setup a 301 redirect from pages on the old site to their closest match on the new site Setup a 301 redirect from the old site's home page to new site's homepage Sounds good, right? But there is one issue I need some advice on... The old site has about 100 pages that do not have a good match on the new site. These pages are outdated or inferior quality, so it doesn't really make sense to rewrite them and put them on the new site. I call these my "black sheep pages". So... for these "black sheep pages" should I (A) redirect the urls to the new site's homepage (B) redirect the urls the old site's home page (which in turn, redirects to the new site's homepage, or (C) not redirect the urls, and let them die a lonely 404 death? OPTION A: oldsite.com/page1.php -> newsite.com
                        oldsite.com/page2.php -> newsite.com
                        oldsite.com/page3.php -> newsite.com
                        oldsite.com/page4.php -> newsite.com
                        oldsite.com/page5.php -> newsite.com
                        oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION B: oldsite.com/page1.php -> oldsite.com
                        oldsite.com/page2.php -> oldsite.com
                        oldsite.com/page3.php -> oldsite.com
                        oldsite.com/page4.php -> oldsite.com
                        oldsite.com/page5.php -> oldsite.com
                        oldsite.com -> newsite.com OPTION 😄 oldsite.com/page1.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                        oldsite.com/page2.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                        oldsite.com/page3.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                        oldsite.com/page4.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                        oldsite.com/page5.php : do not redirect, let page 404 and disappear forever
                        oldsite.com -> newsite.com My intuition tells me that Option A would pass the most "link juice" to my new site, but I am concerned that it could also be seen by Google as a spammy redirect technique. What would you do? Help 😐

                        Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndreVanKets
                        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
                      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.