301 to Intermediate Page then Rel=Canonical from Intermediate to target page

[Ankkesh]

Hi

I'm working on an eCommerce site and don't have direct access to the CMS. I had requested developers to provide me a facilty to 301 via htaccess however this is working slight differently. I need guidance from experts whether it's okay or not:

Old Page: example.com/old

Target New Page: example.com/new

After Implementing the redirect, It redirects to an intermediate page or in other words, The same target URL with a question mark added:

example.com/new? (notice the question mark in the new URL)

This intermediate page has a canonical tag for the exact target URL.

So,

if I 301 redirect example.com/old

to example.com/new? (Intermediate page)

and If the intermediate page example.com/new? has a canonical tag for the exact target URL (example.com/new), Will I be able to pass the link juice and authority of old page to the new page?

[Dr-Pete]

It's not ideal. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to guess how Google will interpret that, and it can vary a lot with the situation. In theory, a 301+canonical could work like a chained 301-redirect. A two-link 301 chain isn't great, but it's not awful, and it will pass some link-juice. A 301+canonical is probably slightly worse, in practice, I doubt the outcome is consistent across sites.

Keep in mind, too, that a 301 lands the user on a new URL, whereas a canonical doesn't. So, this could cause more people to link to the intermediate page, bookmark it, etc. (also not ideal).

I'm curious - why can you set up a 301 to an intermediate page but no to the target page. It seems like you'd need more CMS access to do what you did then solve the original problem.

[Dr-Pete]

Sorry - I got an email that you left a response, but then it was gone(?) Might be a system glitch. Could you reply again?