Ugly Redirect Chain

[TSEOTEAM]

Hey everyone,

Hoping to get your take on this:

• We have some very high demand products, they usually sell out in minutes (lucky us, eh?!)
• We are implementing a queue function on a product page - basically if too many people try to check out at the same time, we dump them in a queue
• The queue could kick in before or after search engines have indexed the product page
• The product page has markup and on-page content relating to the product.
• The queue page exists on an external (yes, external) site
• The queue page will not have any of the product info, markup, or optimised page title
• Product page will 302 to queue page and starts a series of 302 redirects!

Here's the sequence when queue is active:

1. CANONICAL product page (with markup, on-page product info, optimised page title, etc.)
   >> 302 >>
2. queue page on external domain (ZERO markup, product info or page title)
   >>302>>
3. same queue page, but throwing a hashed queue ID into the URL (basically giving you your place in the queue)
   HELD IN QUEUE FOR A FEW MINUTES
   **>> 302> **
4. NON-CANONICAL product page (with markup, on-page product info, optimised page title, etc.)

I can foresee two scenarios

1. search engine has indexed product page prior to queue kicking in. Then queue kicks in 302ing search engine to queue page. because it's a 302 the crappy queue page content is indexed back to the originating product page. This causes search engines to drop the product page cos all the product-specific markup/content has been overwritten with crappy queue page content
2. search engines don't manage to index product page before queue kicks in. They crawl product page URL, get 302 to queue page, index crappy queue page content and think the product page is crappy, so don't traffic it. They will recrawl the product page once the queue's turned off, only to discover the product has sold out - boo.

I very much doubt the search engines will 'wait for a few minutes' so may never end up reaching the product page again.

I'm trying to get the markup/product info and optimised meta data injected into the queue page, so that remains present at all points on the journey in the hope that this enables search engines to continue to rank and traffic the product page.

What's your take on this?

Any suggestions on how we might overcome the issues? (before you ask; avoiding using the queue system is impossible, sorry!)

Thanks!

[Dalerio-Consulting]

To be honest, I am a bit lost in the explanation of your external redirect chain, but I would like to add:

1- If the products on your site are selling within minutes, then why are you focusing your attention on how Google will index them?

2- As the products sell out within minutes and after so the redirection is stopped, then why would that affect how Google ranks your site?

Google doesn't instantly crawl and index your page as soon as it is created. From past experience, I can say that it can take 2-3 days for Google to index new articles, and that would be more than enough time for your products to sell out and for the redirect chain to be stopped.

An alternative solution would be so that when the user first gets to the site and clicks the "purchase" button, you don't just redirect him to the queue page, but open the queue page on a new tab. That way it won't count as a redirect but simply as a link from your site to the redirect site.

Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com

[TSEOTEAM]

Thanks for taking the time to answer. Agreed. It's confusing at best. It confused the heck out of me when I was deconstructing the behaviour.

We generally get indexed faster than 2-3 days. Last time I checked the average time to index was around 40 minutes. Guess that's because the engines know our content changes frequently.

_1- If the products on your site are selling within minutes, then why are you focusing your attention on how Google will index them?  _Most of our purchasing customers come via Natural Search.

2- As the products sell out within minutes and after so the redirection is stopped, then why would that affect how Google ranks your site?  I should have been clearer: t****he queue will trigger after a threshold is reached, not when product is sold out. But if it's a particularly high demand product, it could sell out before threshold dips below that configured for the queue.

Good suggestion about opening queue in a tab.I will explore that option.