I've managed to 301 everything except that pesky %20 url, perhaps because of the %20 or perhaps because that's also the only one in a folder.

Here's what's worked for simple urls such as www.site.com/old-page

RewriteRule ^old-page$ http://www.site.com/new-page  [R=301,L]

But the same format for the %20 hasn't worked:

RewriteRule ^/products/product-name%20$ http://www.site.com/products/new-url [R=301,L]

I think this is the culprit:

Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]

At the moment,
Redirect 301 /old-page http://www.site.com/new-page

creates
www.site.com/new-page?q=old-page

I have tried the 301s both before the CMS rule and after it, without success.

Thanks for the reply. I tried it but it didn't work, but I given incorrect info in the question, which is now corrected. I had said other 301 were working fine when in fact they weren't. Those without %20 are redirecting to an odd hybrid of urls.

After some searching, I think this has something to do with the drupal CMS and the rules it creates in htaccess.

I have a product page that ends /product-name**%20** that I'm trying to redirect in this way:

Redirect 301 /products/product-name%20 http://www.site.com/products/product-name

And it doesn't redirect at all. The others, those with %20, are being redirected to a url hybrid of old and new: http://www.site.com/products/product-name**?q=old-url**

I'm using Drupal CMS, and it may be creating rules that counter my entries.

That makes sense, good point. Thanks.

Hi Dana

Why might the links generated by a news story or new product perhaps be less permanent than others?

BB

If you're lucky enough to have kept a record of the linking domains, you could search to see if Google has taken some sites out of their index by doing a "site:" search, ie:

site:domain-that-links-to-me.com

and if you get no results, I believe that's because Google has de-indexed them.

If you pay for a lot of content sharing type links, they are likely to be on sites that Google will get round to eviscerating eventually.

What percentage of total links have gone?