Open site explorer is giving me strange redirect message.

[A_Fotografy]

Hi all,

I tried to find answer in help section. Few people have asked this before but in none of the answers it tells how they fix it. Sorry I will need to ask here again.

In Open Site Explorer i get this message.

You entered the URL https://a-fotografy.co.uk/ which redirects to http://www.a-fotografy.co.uk/. Because it's likely to have more accurate metrics, we're showing data for the redirected URL instead. Click here to analyze https://a-fotografy.co.uk/ instead?

My current site is https://a-fotografy.co.uk/ not sure why it is redirecting to my old domain. Weird. My web developer couldn't explain this issue.

Saying that I also go my first analytics report and in priority issues I have

http://a-fotografy.co.uk   302 redirect and not sure where it is redirecting to.

If someone could shed some light of how to figure out how to find exactly what is redirecting to what and where is the problem.

Thank you guys,

Regards,

Armands

[A_Fotografy]

Hi Don,

I got web guy to fix the issue. Seems it should be fixed now and I should have 301 redirects.

Not sure why I still get that message in Open Site Explorer, but I have raised this with MOZ support.

Thanks Don for all your help.

Regards,

Armands

[donford]

Hi Armands,

Looks like I made an error in the code posted above (I did not edit the original post it so we can see the problem).

The 4th line:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Should be

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Since we are redirecting to the HTTPS version.

The corrected code is as follows:

#If http is requested (ie https off) then redirect to https none www
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.)$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
#If https is requested (ie https on) then redirect to https none www
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.)$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

That still shouldn't change the 302 problem you have, unless this code is executed prior to whatever is causing the 302. I just noticed the error myself and wanted to give you a heads up.

Thanks,

Don

[donford]

Hi Armands,

Glad to help, as a side note if your developer can't get it sorted then you should be able to talk directly with your Hosting provider. These issues while can be complicated are somewhat common and most host have trained their help desk on how to fix them, at least from my past experiences with many different host.

Good luck,

Don

[A_Fotografy]

Thank you Don,

Not to worry. I think my developer is stuck now and has no idea how to fix those 302 redirects. Yesterday I noticed that there were few more coming up.

Around 2 month ago I changed the site. I have a feeling that something went bad during that process.

Now I have hundreds of 404 errors in my webmaster tools and pretty much all of them are old pages and some even from previous website before that which was 3 years ago. Not sure where it is picking up this from.

I also noticed that my previous websites urls making 302 redirects and they redirect from https to http urls.

Here is what happened when we launched new site.

• Changed over to new site. I still had my http address then few weeks after launch we decided that in long term it would be better to have https secure line. Then he added that https and that is where problems started.

Seems like old site now is picking up this https as well and doing those 302 redirects.

I even don't know why my old site is still being crawled and giving me errors. Weird.

I have passed your reply to my developer and see what he will say.

Thank you Don,

Regards,

Armands

[donford]

Hello,

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. Weekend and all..

Okay the problem is still there. You can check the header response codes yourself here:

http://tools.seobook.com/server-header-checker

The URL http://www.a-fotografy.co.uk/ 302 redirects to https://www.a-fotografy.co.uk/ which 301 redirects to https://a-fotografy.co.uk/

There are 2 possible problems I can think of. 1 the code to redirect http://www.a-fotografy.co.uk/ is still in the htaccess file and before the code I gave you. Or 2 the host has a domain redirect in place that is executing on the server before the htaccess is read.

For me to help you further please post the contents of your htaccess file and I'll see if there is something I can pick up on.

Don

[A_Fotografy]

Hi Jo,

We are back to drawing board.

My developer tried to fix this issue, but with no results.

Not sure what is wrong and why he can't fix it

According to webconfs header checker I still have 302 redirects.

I think the web guy made things even worse as on my current domain according to same header checker I have 400 bad request coming back.

Help please. Not sure what to do.

Thanks,

Regards,

Armands

[A_Fotografy]

Hi Don,

My developer tried to fix this issue today, used your suggested code, but still it seems site explorer brings up the same message He is stuck and not sure what else to do.

I don't know much about the code and he is saying that he has done everything possible.

If you have a minute, could you have a look what is the code now?

Thank you Don,

Regards,

Armands

[donford]

That is correct, 302 is a temporary redirect so it does not pass link juice the same way, and should be fixed asap.

Glad to help,

Don

[A_Fotografy]

Hi Don,

Thank you for looking into this.

So basically I need to point all links to my existing domain.

I knew there is something weird going on.

My old www domain used to be very good in rankings and my guess now since there is 302 all link juice is not passed onto my new domain.

Thanks Don I will pass this info to my web developer.

Regards,

Armands

[donford]

Hello Again,

Okay so it looks like what is happening is:
the http www version is 302 to the https.www version and the https.www version is 301 to the non-www. So what you have is one redirect pointing to another redirect.

This is likely confusing Moz, or Moz has in the past crawled a different version and has more data for that so it wants to show you it instead.

The headers are:

http://www.a-fotografy.co.uk/

---

302 Found

Status:    302 Found
Code:    302
Date:    Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:43:08 GMT
Server:    Apache
X-FRAME-OPTIONS:    DENY
X-XSS-Protection:    1; mode=block
Location:    https://www.a-fotografy.co.uk/
Cache-Control:    max-age=0
Expires:    Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:43:08 GMT
Vary:    Accept-Encoding
Content-Length:    214
Keep-Alive:    timeout=10, max=200
Content-Type:    text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Connection:    close

https://www.a-fotografy.co.uk/

---

301 Moved Permanently

Status:    301 Moved Permanently
Code:    301
Date:    Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:43:08 GMT
Server:    Apache
X-FRAME-OPTIONS:    DENY
X-XSS-Protection:    1; mode=block
Location:    https://a-fotografy.co.uk/
Cache-Control:    max-age=0
Expires:    Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:43:08 GMT
Vary:    Accept-Encoding
Content-Length:    234
Connection:    close
Content-Type:    text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

https://a-fotografy.co.uk/

---

200 OK

Status:    200 OK
Code:    200
Date:    Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:43:08 GMT
Server:    Apache
X-FRAME-OPTIONS:    DENY
X-XSS-Protection:    1; mode=block
Accept-Ranges:    bytes
Content-Length:    21886
Cache-Control:    max-age=0, public
Expires:    Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:43:08 GMT
Vary:    Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
X-Powered-By:    WP Rocket/2.6.15
Connection:    close
Content-Type:    text/html; charset=UTF-8

What you want to do is get all your redirects to 301 to the correct version.

This should cover it in your .htaccess file
EDIT 01/07/2016: Please see the below responses for corrected code.

#If http is requested (ie https off) then redirect to https none www
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.)$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://%1/$1 [R=301,L]
#If https is requested (ie https on) then redirect to https none www
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} on
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.)$ [NC]
  RewriteRule ^(.)$ https://%1/$1 [R=301,L]

Hope this helps,

Don