Help with pages Google is labeling "Not Followed"

[Jdubin]

I am seeing a number of pages that I am doing 301 redirects  on coming up under the "Not Followed" category of the advanced index status in google webmasters.  Google says this might be because the page is still showing active content or the redirect is not correct.  I don't know how to tell if the page is still showing active content, and if someone can please tell me how to determine this it would be greatly appreciated.  Also if you can provide a solution for how to adjust my page to make sure that the content is not appearing to be active, that would be amazing.  Thanks in advance, here is a few links to pages that are experiencing this:

www.luxuryhomehunt.com/homes-for-sale/sunnyisles.html

www.luxuryhomehunt.com/homes-for-sale/summerield.html

[JaredMumford]

The link you referenced has 'www' in it, is that how the link is targeted on your website? If so, its probably the double redirect that is causing the issue. Since WP is set to 'non-www' - every time there is a call for the www version of a url, WP automatically 301 redirects it to the non-www version. There is nothing wrong with this.

Its when there is a call for a 'www' version of a URL that has also been redirected, as the one you cited has, where a double redirect now takes place:

http://www.luxuryhome..../sunnyilses.html

to the 'non-ww' version:

http://luxuryhome.../sunnyisles.html

then from there to the new html file version:

http://luxuryhome.../sunny-isles.html

The header check shows a normal www to non-www redirect first (WP is doing this), and then the 301 redirect that changes the sunnyisles to sunny-isles.  Both server responses seem OK so the redirects themselves seem to be working. What you want to make sure of is:

Any internal links linking to the old sunnyisles.html page do not contain 'www'. (And in any event, these links should be changed to point to the new page anyway).

Any inbound links from external sources do not reference the 'www' version.

It would be helpful if we cound see the htaccess file as well.

[wrttnwrd]

Hi Joshua,

It looks like you're redirecting from the 'www' version to the non 'www' version. The 301 redirect is set up just fine.

2 things to check first:

• In Google Webmaster Tools, do you have the preferred domain set to the 'www' version? That might cause this confusion.
• In robots.txt, you're blocking Google Image Bot from crawling that folder. Once, I saw an instance where that screwed up Googlebot as well, and removing the disallow fixed the problem.

Ian

[Jdubin]

Hi Jared,

Thank you very much for answering my question.  So if someone is linking to me from another site, but uses the www version of a url does it not help my seo?

And if this is the case, what do you recommend I do?

Thanks.

[Jdubin]

Hello Ian,

Thanks for your help as well.  Question for you, I current have not set a preferred version in my google webmasters account.  Do you think I should go ahead and establish the non www version as my setting?

Thanks.

[Jdubin]

Hello Ian,

Thanks for your help as well.  Question for you, I current have not set a preferred version in my google webmasters account.  Do you think I should go ahead and establish the non www version as my setting?

Thanks.

[wrttnwrd]

MIght as well, yes.

[wrttnwrd]

The 301 will preserve some of the authority passed through from the www version of the link.

One note - Google sometimes has a rough time with consecutive 301s. Normally it's only a problem if there are several in a row. Here you have two. You might consider reducing that to 1...?

[JaredMumford]

Hi Joshua -

If someone is linking to the www version then it doesnt pass as much juice as it would if it wasnt redirected (theres lots of info on this on the internet with varied options). Overall, most SEO's agree that an inbound link that points directly to a page without being 301 redirected has more of a positive SEO effect.

With that being said, in your case Google Webmaster Tools may be detecting this double redirect error simply because there is an external website somewhere linking to the 'www' version. You can find this using OSE or using the WMT by going to CRAWL ERRORS and looking for the sunny-isles url. Clicking on it (if its there) will show who is linking to you and from where.

BTW - when did you do the redirects, and how long since you noticed the new url wasnt indexed (and was the old URL indexed?)