Ugly Redirect Chain
-
Hey everyone,
Hoping to get your take on this:
- We have some very high demand products, they usually sell out in minutes (lucky us, eh?!)
- We are implementing a queue function on a product page - basically if too many people try to check out at the same time, we dump them in a queue
- The queue could kick in before or after search engines have indexed the product page
- The product page has markup and on-page content relating to the product.
- The queue page exists on an external (yes, external) site
- The queue page will not have any of the product info, markup, or optimised page title
- Product page will 302 to queue page and starts a series of 302 redirects!
Here's the sequence when queue is active:
- CANONICAL product page (with markup, on-page product info, optimised page title, etc.)
>> 302 >> - queue page on external domain (ZERO markup, product info or page title)
>>302>> - same queue page, but throwing a hashed queue ID into the URL (basically giving you your place in the queue)
HELD IN QUEUE FOR A FEW MINUTES
**>> 302> ** - NON-CANONICAL product page (with markup, on-page product info, optimised page title, etc.)
I can foresee two scenarios
- search engine has indexed product page prior to queue kicking in. Then queue kicks in 302ing search engine to queue page. because it's a 302 the crappy queue page content is indexed back to the originating product page. This causes search engines to drop the product page cos all the product-specific markup/content has been overwritten with crappy queue page content
- search engines don't manage to index product page before queue kicks in. They crawl product page URL, get 302 to queue page, index crappy queue page content and think the product page is crappy, so don't traffic it. They will recrawl the product page once the queue's turned off, only to discover the product has sold out - boo.
I very much doubt the search engines will 'wait for a few minutes' so may never end up reaching the product page again.
I'm trying to get the markup/product info and optimised meta data injected into the queue page, so that remains present at all points on the journey in the hope that this enables search engines to continue to rank and traffic the product page.
What's your take on this?
Any suggestions on how we might overcome the issues? (before you ask; avoiding using the queue system is impossible, sorry!)
Thanks!
-
Thanks for taking the time to answer. Agreed. It's confusing at best. It confused the heck out of me when I was deconstructing the behaviour.
We generally get indexed faster than 2-3 days. Last time I checked the average time to index was around 40 minutes. Guess that's because the engines know our content changes frequently.
_1- If the products on your site are selling within minutes, then why are you focusing your attention on how Google will index them? _Most of our purchasing customers come via Natural Search.
2- As the products sell out within minutes and after so the redirection is stopped, then why would that affect how Google ranks your site? I should have been clearer: t****he queue will trigger after a threshold is reached, not when product is sold out. But if it's a particularly high demand product, it could sell out before threshold dips below that configured for the queue.
Good suggestion about opening queue in a tab.I will explore that option.
-
To be honest, I am a bit lost in the explanation of your external redirect chain, but I would like to add:
1- If the products on your site are selling within minutes, then why are you focusing your attention on how Google will index them?
2- As the products sell out within minutes and after so the redirection is stopped, then why would that affect how Google ranks your site?
Google doesn't instantly crawl and index your page as soon as it is created. From past experience, I can say that it can take 2-3 days for Google to index new articles, and that would be more than enough time for your products to sell out and for the redirect chain to be stopped.
An alternative solution would be so that when the user first gets to the site and clicks the "purchase" button, you don't just redirect him to the queue page, but open the queue page on a new tab. That way it won't count as a redirect but simply as a link from your site to the redirect site.
Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com
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
-
301 redirects and impact on page authority
I need to restructure a section of my website, changing some page titles and moving some pages to other sections. This will then change the URLs but the CMS I use will automatically create 301 redirects so the old URLs still work. The question is, will this have any negative impacts on page authority/page rank? From what I've read, it seems having 301's used to have a negative impact but doesn't anymore?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ciehmoz0 -
If I redirect a subdomain, does this affect the parent domain?
Hi I have a company for example: abc.com and they have a subdomain def.abc.com with a lot of errors. These errors i believe affect the parent domain abc.com. So my company would like to redirect the subdomain to another domain altogther ex: xyz.com Can i redirect the subdomain def.abc.com to another website domain? Would this affect the parent domain in a good or bad way? Or should i be using an external links to point to a new domain for the subdomain? Trying to think what's best for SEO and the parent domain. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crodriguez890 -
Fetch As Google Redirect from HTTPS to HTTP
Hi Moz Community, We just launched a redesigned site and moved our blog from http://sparkline.motifinvesting.com to https://www.motifinvesting.com/blog. When I went to check the site today I noticed something strange. When I Fetch a Blog URL as Google it is redirecting from https to http AND dropping the / <post-id>from the end of the URL.</post-id> So for the URL https://www.motifinvesting.com/blog/cleantech-obama-romney/1494 I am getting the attached results when I Fetch as Google. When I access the same URL in my browser, I see a 200 status code and no redirect. Why would Google Bot show that the URL is being redirected? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | motif_marketing
Breanna https://www.motifinvesting.com/blog/cleantech-obama-romney/1494 I7yQPza.png0 -
To Redirect or Not
I have a strange situation and looking for advice on how well a permanent redirect of url will work. I have an eCommerce site called twpstain.com. This site sells TWP Deck stain and the URL/Content is fully owned by me. We do not however own the TWP brand and have always operated with permission from the manufacturer as an Authorized dealer. Circumstance have come up where they now want to be in control of all URLS that have the name "TWP" in them. Not sure if they legally can do this but they can cut me off with product if I do not comply. My options are: 1. A permanent redirect of entire site to new URL that does not have the word "TWP" in the url. 2. Give them the URL but they are willing to have me use the URL as I have in the past. A contract for this would be drawn up to cover me for years to come and possibly offer compensation if they decide not to renew. My concerns are numerous but the question for the Moz community is to how well the 301 redirect will work and will I lose my rankings? I currently dominate the rankings for my site and I very concerned that there will be major loss of sales and traffic. Any help or opinions on this would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dogtopiamichigan0 -
Penalty after 301 redirect?
We run a training center. We had 1 main website and 2 dedicated websites to certain themes. The 2 dedicated websites are older and the main website is about 6 months old. The 2 dedicated websites had a top 5 ranking for their most important keywords. 2 weeks ago we imported all the content from the dedicated websites into the main website. Then immediately after we did a perfect 301 redirect of these websites to the main website. 2 SEO companies checked it for us and so I'm very sure this is done right. Google immediately caught this up and gave the main website a boost. We where in the top 10 for many important keywords for 1 week. The next week all our rankings dropped. We only have a top 50 ranking for 10 keywords. Before it was 75 keywords in the top 20. Do you know what could have caused this? Any suggestion, thought, ... is welcome!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wellnesswooz0 -
303 redirect
Hi, 303 redirect is a good thing or not ? I have a homepage in 2 languages FR and EN > mywebsite.com/fr/ and mywebsite.com/en/. A 303 redirect is on mywebsite.com to mywebsite.com/fr/. Thanks D.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | android_lyon0 -
Redirect or Rewrite? 2 pages ranking
We have two pages ranking for "Custom Web Design" http://www.imageworksstudio.com/custom-web-design ranks higher (consistently 9-13) and http://www.imageworksstudio.com/content/custom-web-design ranks around 35-40 the latter is actually an older version of the article that never was replaced or taken down - but it has the majority of the links to it Wondering if we should update the old content so it is not similar to the one that is ranking better or if we should redirect everything to /custom-web-design to see if it can secure better rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imageworks-2612900 -
301 redirect from .html to non .html?
Previously our site was using this as our URL structure: www.site.com/page.html. A few months ago we updated our URL structure to this: www.site.com/page & we're not using the .html. I've read over this guide & don't see anywhere that discusses this: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection. I've currently got a programmer looking into, but am always a bit weary with their workarounds, as I'd previously had them cause more problems then fix it. Here is the solution he is looking to do: The way that I am doing the redirect is fine. The problem is of where to put the code. The issue is that the files are .html files that need to be redirected to the same url with out a .html on them. I can see if I can add that to the 404 redirect page if there is one inside of there and see if that does the trick. That way if there is no page that exists without the .html then it will still be a 404 page. However if it is there then it will work as normal. I will see what I can find and get back. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, BJ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seointern0