When does Open Site Explorer automatically follow a redirect?

[irvingw]

Does anyone know what determines when Open Site Explorer will ask if you meant to type in the redirected URL or when it will automatically change the URL to the www version.

example of a site I get asked the redirect question:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons.html?site=checkbook.org

Oh Hey! It looks like that URL redirects to www.checkbook.org/. Would you like to see data for <a class="clickable redirects">that URL instead</a>?

example of a site that redirects automatically:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons.html?site=healthleap.com

[ShaMenz]

Hi,

Since this is fundamentally a question about how OSE works, the quickest and best option would be to email the help team direct  help [at] seomoz.org. Provide them with the example you have listed here and they will be able to explain it for you.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[carinoverturf]

Hey! I just saw this post - not sure if you filed a ticket the Customer Service team, but I wanted to see if I can help explain what's going on.

I wanted to make sure I had a full handle of what was going on so I talked with one of the Open Site Explorer developers. So my understanding is it will automatically redirect when Linkscape has identified it as a redirect, but if Open Site Explorer requests data from Linkscape and is returned a 301, then the message alert will show up and Open Site Explorer will show the redirected URL metrics.

Two main reasons this could happen - the redirect wasn't in place when we crawled the page so it wasn't recorded as a redirect. The other reason could be when Open Site Explorer requests Linkscape metrics for a given URL, it does not explicitly say if the URL is a redirect - it only tells us if the searched form is canonical. If the search form does not match the canonical, we assume it redirects to the canonical.

I hope that helps explain a bit, but let me know if you have more questions! The customer service team is awesome and they will be able to help you at as well!

Thanks,

Carin

[ShaMenz]

Hey Carin,

Thanks for taking the time to follow up on this for us.

I figured the answer would be something along those lines, but didn't want to leap in with speculation.

Much appreciated,

Sha

[carinoverturf]

For sure! I figured it's a question that has crossed people's minds before (I know it has for me!) so if you see anyone else wondering, I wanted you to have something to point them to

Thanks!

Carin