301 Redirect "wildcard" question

[craigycraig]

I have been looking at the SEOmoz redirect guide for some advice but I can't seem to find the answer : http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection

I have lots of URLs from a previous version of a site that look like the following:

sitename.com/-c-25.html?sort=2d&page=1

sitename.com/-c-25.html?sort=3a&page=1

etc etc.

I want to write a redirect so whenever a URL with the terms "-c-25.html" is requested it redirects to a specified page, regardless of what comes after the question mark.

These URLs were created by our previous ecommerce software. The 'c' is for category, and each page of the cateogry created a different URL. I want to do these so I can rediect all of these URLs to the appropraite new cateogry page in a single redirect.

Thanks for any help.

[HiveDigitalInc]

If your site is in PHP, you could simply add the code...

$targetURL = "http://www.sitename.com/whatever-page-you-what";

if(stristr($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],"-c-25.html")) {

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: $targetURL");

}

?>

If you don't have access to PHP, you could add a line like this to your HTACCESS file...

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} (c-25.html) [NC]
RewriteRule .* http://www.sitename.com/your-target-page [L,R=301]

Someone might want to double check me on that rewriteRule above, though.

[perfectweb]

Would something liek this work:

RewriteRule ^-c-(.).html(.)$ category/$1.html$2 [R,NC]

I've not tested it, nor do I claim to be an expert, but I think it will work for what you're tryign to acheive - e.g. -c-25.html becomes category/25.html

[HiveDigitalInc]

I think that would probably work for him, assuming that the category IDs remain the same.

[craigycraig]

Just to calrify I need a URL that has

/-c-25.html?blahblahblah

to change to:

/dolphin_tshirts

Regardless of that is written in the blahblahblah part.

[HiveDigitalInc]

If you need these to be 301 redirects...

RewriteRule ^-c-25.html(.*)$ http://www.yoursite.com/dolphin_tshirts [R=301,L]

[craigycraig]

I thought that may do it but still nothing. Maybe I am entering it wrong? Here is the code in .htaccess:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /test/

RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L

]RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /test/index.php [L]

RewriteRule ^-c-21.html(.*)$ http://www.mysitename.com/test/category/t-shirts/dolphin_tshirts [R=301,L

]

The redirect just doesn't happen.

EDIT: If I write a standard redirect : Redirect 301 /test/-c-21.html then it will redirect to the desired page but it will retain the ?blahblah and add it to the new URL. I want it to work like this but discard the ?blahblahblah after redirecting.

[HiveDigitalInc]

Order matters in Rewrites. You will have to place that Rewrite Rule above the others.

[craigycraig]

OK, If I make it the first redirect then the redirection works - regardless of what is written after the 'c-21.html'.

However the redirect is retaining the erroneous URL data after redirection. It is adding the '?blahblahblah" to the end of the new URL. I want it to dispose of this so all the redirects are routed to just one URL. How do I instruct it to not include this unwanted data in the new URL?

Thanks

[SEOKeith]

An easy way is to use RedirectMatch, example:

RedirectMatch 301 /-c-25.html http://www.domain.com/new-category

Drop the above in a .htaccess file, test it works how you expect first

[iJeep]

When I did a similar transition with hundreds of thousands of links. I created a database table with source and destination columns. Then a script that handles all 404 requests. If the requested link matches an entry in the source column, the user is sent a 301 to the matching destination entry. That allowed for easier maintenance than a huge htaccess file and the server load caused by te script should go down over time as 301 are saved and you contact site owners to update links. The other benefit is that you can do enhanced tracking to see what is request, found and not found and where those people came from.