How do you 301 redirect URLs with a hashbang (#!) format? We just lost a ton of pagerank because we thought javascript redirect was the only way! But other sites have been able to do this – examples and details inside

[DA2013]

Hi Moz,

Here's more info on our problem, and thanks for reading!

• We’re trying to Create 301 redirects for 44 pages on site.com.
• We’re having trouble 301 redirecting these pages, possibly because they are AJAX and have hashbangs in the URLs.
• These are locations pages. The old locations URLs are in the following format: www.site.com/locations/#!new-york and the new URLs that we want to redirect to are in this format: www.site.com/locations/new-york
• We have not been able to create these redirects using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v.1.5.3.2.
• The CMS is WordPress version 3.9.1
• The reason we want to 301 redirect these pages is because we have created new pages to replace them, and we want to pass pagerank from the old pages to the new. A 301 redirect is the ideal way to pass pagerank.
• Examples of pages that are able to 301 redirect hashbang URLs include http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles#!Saddles and https://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey.

[KevinBudzynski]

I may be wrong, but I don't believe you can do this via a 301 redirect. How did you know the examples used a 301 redirect? The examples provided may have used JavaScript to do it (may not be the best, but can't think of any other option).

[Andy.Drinkwater]

The hash tag means that the page wont be indexed by Google and therefore, carry no page rank. It is like it is invisible. Just launch the new pages because Google will have never seen the current ones.

-Andy

[KevinBudzynski]

With the JavaScript option, people who bookmarked the page will get redirected.

[DA2013]

Thanks for the responses!

@Kevin: Our main concern here is getting back that lost page rank, since javascript redirects don't pass page rank. We used http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/ and _SEO Tools for Excel _to check whether the hashbang URL examples were using 301 redirects.

The correct URLs are

http://twitter.com/#!RobOusbey
http://www.sherrilltree.com/Saddles/#!Saddles

@iNetSEO

These pages were indexed by Google before somehow, I suspect using escaped_fragment? the hashbang URLs would show up in search results

[Andy.Drinkwater]

That will teach me to skim read

Perhaps trying a different 301 plugin will help? Alternatively, you can pretty much redirect anything from within .htaccess.

This page on Webmaster World might be worth reading.

-Andy

[spencerhjustice]

That's not true. Google is able to crawl and index properly setup ajax based pages like the one in question. Bing on the otherhand is not able to do so or at least not last time I checked.

[spencerhjustice]

I would like to point out that twitter is using javascript redirects not serverside redirects. If you disable javascript and try that url it will load the homepage/ your twitter feed and the url will stay the same.

The second url doesn't seem to be properly redirecting as at least for me it just 301 redirects back to itself.

[JamesTDG]

The solution I came up with was:

1. Create a list of all the source URLs you have, and all the destination URLs you want
2. Create all the destination URL pages
3. Work out what the Ugly versions of all hashbang (pretty) URLs should be and record them (ref: https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/docs/specification)
4. Implement 301 Redirects for the Ugly URLs
5. Deploy a Sitemap with Pretty URLs
6. Submit Your Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools
7. Wait for Google to re-index all your pages
8. Check that the new URL(s) show up in Google search results too
9. Clean up – Remove the pretty URLs from the sitemap

Job done!

I created a detailed page on this with examples on my blog at www.thedriversgarage.com/web-technology/redirecting-hashbang-urls-wix-urls/

Disclaimer - Make your own enquiries and do your own tests.  I'm a pragmatist, I really don't care if this complies to standards.  It worked for me and that's all I cared about.  Google, etc. may process this stuff differently in the future. Do your own tests.