Website Grader Report - Permanent Redirect Not Found
-
Have you ever checked HubSpot's website grader at www.websitegrader.com? I usually notice that the tool gives an error namely "Permanent Redirect Not Found" with below explanation:
"Search engines may think www.example.com and example.com are two different sites.You should set up a permanent redirect (technically called a "301 redirect") between these sites. Once you do that, you will get full search engine credit for your work on these sites. :(Website Grader)
Can we trust this tool?
-
Thanks Ryan, appreciated!
-
You are certainly welcome to set your preferred domain in Google WMT but it is not required to do such if you have your permanent redirection properly in place.
-
Definitely makes sense Ryan. Thank you so much!
One more question; there is settings under Google Webmaster Tools, where you can set www.example.com or example.com. After we have done permanent (301) redirection to one of the versions, we should adjust settings in Google Webmaster Tools as well, right?
-
I can definitely confirm this issue has a negative impact on SEO.
Let's use "mysite.com" as the root site. In this example "www.mysite.com" is a sub-domain. It's statistics such as Domain Authority are gathered independently of the "mysite.com" root domain.
If you want to see an example, try the wordpress.com site. You can create your own subdomain (subject to availability) on the wordpress.com domain. Try making Stradiji.wordpress.com. You will notice your DA starts off at zero. It is a different subdomain. In this same manner, the "www." and root domain are different sites.
I hope this makes sense.
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for the answer. My question was not so clear; I wonder how can we verify whether this has a negative SEO effect where there are hundreds of thousands websites in similar situation?
-
It is very easy to confirm whether the tool is working correctly or not.
Visit the site in question, then add or remove the "www." portion of the URL. A properly redirected site should adjust and only appear using a common URL. For example, the SEOmoz site uses the www subdomain. Try removing the "www." prefix and you will see the redirect happen where the "www." subdomain is automatically re-added. That is the correct behavior. If that change is not happening on the site in question, it should be fixed.
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
-
Domain forwarding or redirects for SEO?
Hi all! A client of mine owns several top level domains which are not in use, let's call them example.nu, example.de, example.net and so on. The current website is example.com.
Technical SEO | | JHultqvist
When checking the technical status of the unused domains I realized that all but one are forwarded (via DNS) to example.com and only one has a 301 redirect. Should I redirect all of them by means of 301 or let them stay forwarded? Very few of the domains have any other sites linking to them. Any thoughts would be really appreciated! Jesper0 -
301 Redirect for multiple links
I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old
Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New
domain.com/urban
domain.com/urban/tempe
domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale0 -
301 Redirects, Sitemaps and Indexing - How to hide redirected urls from search engines?
We have several pages in our site like this one, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions, which redirect to deeper page, http://www.spectralink.com/solutions/work-smarter-not-harder. Both urls are listed in the sitemap and both pages are being indexed. Should we remove those redirecting pages from the site map? Should we prevent the redirecting url from being indexed? If so, what's the best way to do that?
Technical SEO | | HeroDesignStudio0 -
301 Redirects
Hi, We have migrated to a new domain name and I wrote my redirects as follows: Redirect 301 / http://www.healthpointe.net Redirect 301 /urgent_care_locations.shtml http://www.healthpointe.net/healthpointe-locations/ Redirect 301 /locations.shtml http://www.healthpointe.net/healthpointe-locations/ Redirect 301 /career_client_relations_rep.shtml http://www.healthpointe.net/careers/ My issue is that when I include the first redirect, which is to the main page of the website that the other redirects stop working. Any idea what the problem could be?
Technical SEO | | healthpointeseo0 -
301 Redirects in subfolders
Hi, we're making our site into a static site but I would like to transfer the Google juice. Most of the links and database exist on subfolders though. Could I simply do 301 redirects on the subfolders and retain the value or does it have to be on the full domain?
Technical SEO | | Therealmattyd0 -
Fix redirect loop
Hi,
Technical SEO | | bshanahan
I've been trying set up a 301 redirect from http://domestiquecap.com to www.domestiquecap.com but one was already set up by my client the other way around (from www to http://) so it's creating a redirect loop. However, we don't know where that original redirect was set up. The htaccess file doesn't appear to have the redirect and neither does the control panel of our hosting company. We need to turn off that original redirect so that I can instead redirect to the www subdomain. Where else could this 301 redirect have been set up? Is there a tool to diagnose where the 301 redirect was created so that I can turn it off? I am thinking maybe it was created via the domain registrar (GoDaddy) since the client has the login there and hasnt shared it with me.0 -
Should we handle this redirect differently?
So our question is should we handle page redirection/rewriting in php or in .htaccess (with a specific problem we are running into outlined below). We have an ecommerce store in a subfolder of our site (example.com/store/). In the next folder down we have a group of widgets(www.example.com/store/widget-group1). Recently we put a .htaccess redirect in the top level folder (example.com/store/.htaccess), in order to re-write some URL’s and also 301 a page to another page. This seems to be negatively affecting our /widgets-group1/ subfolder however (organic traffic to example.com/store/widget-group1) took a nose dive 3 days after putting the .htaccess redirect in place on the /store/ folder and it has not recovered 8 days later). *Nothing appears outwardly wrong with the current setup to the eye when viewing the pages or requesting as googlebot (the only issue being the nose dive in organic traffic lol) *both subfolders are setup in apache config file to allow local overrides of .htaccess as follows: <directory store="" widget-group1="">Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
Technical SEO | | altecdesign
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all</directory> <directory store="">Options -Indexes FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all</directory>0 -
How does this rank? - a page that is 301 redirected
How does a 301ed page rank in google? In google I searched for" ikea.ca" which is set up as a 301 redirect to www.ikea.com/ca/en and was surprised to see the url --> www.ikea.ca actually ranking. IKEA Canada <cite>ikea.ca/</cite>IKEA Featuring Scandinavian modern style furniture and accessories. Include storage options, lighting, decor products, kitchen appliances and beds. Bedroom - Kitchen - Living Room - IKEA North York
Technical SEO | | Morris770