Google is forcing a 301 by truncating our URLs

[mmac]

Just recently we noticed that google has indexed truncated urls for many of our pages that get 301'd to the correct page.

For example, we have:
http://www.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/Doubletree-Hotel-Boston-Bedford-Glen.html

as the url linked everywhere and that's the only version of that page that we use.

Google somehow figured out that it would still go to the right place via 301 if they removed the html filename from the end, so they indexed just:

http://www.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/

The 301 is not new. It used to 404, but (probably 5 years ago) we saw a few links come in with the html file missing on similar urls so we decided to 301 them instead thinking it would be helpful.  We've preferred the longer version because it has the name in it and users that pay attention to the url can feel more confident they are going to the right place.

We've always used the full (longer) url and google used to index them all that way, but just recently we noticed about 1/2 of our urls have been converted to the shorter version in the SERPs.  These shortened urls take the user to the right page via 301, so it isn't a case of the user landing in the wrong place, but over 100,000 301s may not be so good.

You can look at: site:www.eventective.com/usa/massachusetts/bedford/ and you'll noticed all of the urls to businesses at the top of the listings go to the truncated version, but toward the bottom they have the full url.

Can you explain to me why google would index a page that is 301'd to the right page and has been for years?

I have a lot of thoughts on why they would do this and even more ideas on how we could build our urls better, but I'd really like to hear from some people that aren't quite as close to it as I am.

One small detail that shouldn't affect this, but I'll mention it anyway, is that we have a mobile site with the same url pattern.

http://m.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/Doubletree-Hotel-Boston-Bedford-Glen.html

We did not have the proper 301 in place on the m. site until the end of last week.  I'm pretty sure it will be asked, so I'll also mention we have the rel=alternate/canonical set up between the www and m sites.

I'm also interested in any thoughts on how this may affect rankings since we seem to have been hit by something toward the end of last week.  Don't hesitate to mention anything else you see that may have triggered whatever may have hit us.

Thank you,
Michael

[jesse-landry]

I'm responding to this in a semi-rushed matter as something is coming up but I just want to mention that the most likely reason for Google to index this version of your URL is because of the links pointing to it. Those which caused you to put a 301 in place, those that were 404ing prior... They are clearly demonstrating to be the authoritative URL to Google.

I'm not sure why you're worried about what the customer/user sees for URL. They are most likely looking more at the Title/Description in the SERPs well before the URL string. Most people only read the domain portion of a URL string and it's more used for the search engines purposes.. (my opinion) Also, once the user clicks your title or page they are taken to the redirect and the full URL string will be visible in the address bar of their browser.

As for why your rankings are affected... I'd be surprised if it had anything to do with this, honestly. If anything redirecting should help especially if you had links pointing to a broken page. The only exception would be if those links were poison, of course.

Okay got to run hope I was helpful. Good luck!

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Micheal,

I suspect the mobile site might be responsible for the indexed urls issue. Your mobile site has loads of indexed pages with the shorter urls: https://www.google.com/#output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:m.eventective.com&oq=site:m.eventective.com&fp=9861fb8dc6b3e7c

Before the 301 redirects on the mobile site were created, were the rel canonical links pointing to the truncated urls on the main site? Seems to be the case on this random page I grabbed:

view-source:http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2AwUe7jXqvMJ:m.eventective.com/Canada/Ontario/Ottawa/569913/

So a kind of odd mixture of 301s on the main site, and a well indexed mobile site saying the rel canonical on the main site is the shorter url. Seems maybe the rel canonical won! Are you sure this is a recent issue? Maybe it has been like this for a while and just not noticed much?

I would think that with the 301s and rel canonicals now properly implemented on the mobile site then the index will slowly sort itself out. I suppose you could put a rel canonical on the main site page also referencing itself, might speed up the process a bit more.

Agree with Jesse that it is not likely a major worry and wouldn't think this alone would cause a ranking issue.

[mmac]

Lynn,

You nailed it.  That's exactly what the problem was.  Since we were using the same URL pattern for m. and www., we had created the canonical by swapping the "m" out of the current url and replacing it with "www".  Since the truncated versions for mobile were in the index, they were all pointed to a truncated version for desktop.

As you pointed out, this should resolve itself over time.  Now I can focus on just the ranking issue.

Thank you both Lynn and Jesse for your help.

Michael

[mmac]

Lynn,

Thanks again for helping us out with this back in May.  After we made the corrections you pointed out it cleared up over the course of a few months.  There were just a few truncated urls left until suddenly this week we noticed it starting again.  I've looked at our 301s, our canonical/alternates, and made sure we are not linking to the truncated version anywhere, yet google continues to index the truncated version.  I'm tempted to disallow the truncated version in my robots.txt file, but hesitate to do that because of the possibility of some unexpected side effects.

Do you or anyone else reading this have any idea why google would index:

http://www.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/

rather than:

http://www.eventective.com/USA/Massachusetts/Bedford/107/Doubletree-Hotel-Boston-Bedford-Glen.html

when all links point to the latter and the former is even 301'd to the latter.

Any and all help is appreciated.

Thank you,

Michael

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Micheal,

When you say you started noticing it again, this is through webmaster tools or through your own monitoring? I ask because having a look at the site I can see no technical reason why those truncated urls would be getting indexed again at first glance. Maybe it is just a matter of waiting a bit more for the last of them to get removed? If all of a sudden they have started creeping up again, it suggests some variable in the mix has changed  again, but I cannot see anything that stands out.

[mmac]

Lynn,

We had a few "site:" queries that we were watching as the full URLs came back replacing the truncated ones, for example: site:eventective.com/usa/Georgia/Atlanta.  When we discovered the original problem, almost every listing page in those SERPs had a truncated URL, but by the start of last week it had gradually cleared up to only 6 or 7 listings with truncated URLs while all others had the full URL.  Then suddenly we had 5 pages (50 listings) of truncated URLs and now almost 300 of them for that one query have the truncated version indexed.  It appears to be continuing.

Another detail I noticed was in Webmaster Tools.  All of our listings are in our sitemap with the full URL.  When we had this problem before only about 50% of our pages listed in our sitemap were indexed, assuming that is because the truncated ones were in the index instead of the full URLs that were in the sitemap.  As the truncated URL problem cleared up that ratio improved to the point where it was pretty steady at about 96-97% of our pages in our sitemap were indexed.  Once this problem started to reappear that number dropped down to 90% and kept going down to the point where it is at 77% now.

The only real change we made was an upgrade to our server hardware at our hosting company.

I've considered disallowing the truncated URL pattern in the robots.txt, but I really shouldn't have to do that with the 301.

I'm starting to wonder whether google is sending us a signal that they like the shorter version of the URL better.

Thanks for taking the time to take a look at it.

Michael