SEOMOZ Crawl Test

[wrttnwrd]

I'd need to see the PHP redirect code. But in CURL it all looks OK.

Make 100% sure that your PHP code is set up with the lower case 'header' command, like this:

header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently"); header("Location: http://www.site.com"); ?>

Hope this helps.

[kellymandingo]

Hi Robert

Many thanks for taking the time to answer

It was just a domain name change

What we did was a URL Change where all the relevant URLS got to their new names in just a couple of lines of code Like in Ians example, I cant post the code yet as its the weekend and my developer is not working

You state i should have done this URL to URL however the sites has 17k pages

I Know In Open site explorer it sees the 301 however when you use the crawl test tool it does not and this is what maid me ask this question again and its that which bothers me the most

My site prior had a DA of 68 and PA of 62 (but even if you check the pages in Google Pr for the home page is showing 1 where it used to be 4 but the inner pages are between 2 and 3 so it just seems the home page is suffering

[RobertFisher]

Fortunately or unfortunately, it is 0400 here in Houston. Fortunately, our web dev magnificent & company VP is still asleep, but works like me (a bit much). I sent an email for the code that will help. He will rise in a couple of hours and see email and direct us. When he does i will send to see if it helps.

Hopefully, we will find the magic juice retriever.

Best,

[kellymandingo]

Wow

That's really kind of you, i have trouble getting hold of my developer on the weekend so good luck

Many thanks again for your help

[kellymandingo]

I will get you a version of the 301 As soon as i can to see

Me and my developer had a debate whilst doing this and as he is the expert he kind of won but i still question his thinking

What he did was only send over clean URL's from the old site he insisted on sorting out the canonicalization of the URL along with lower and upper case before the URL was sent so in theory on both servers you have a 301 , we know they are not chaining but if the new site has a 301 capable of resolving any bad URL's that come our way , why have it on both

I wanted just the minimum with less chance for anything to go wrong

If you were doing a name change for a site would you do as Robert Fisher suggests above and do this on a URL to URL basis or would you just do the header response 301 as in your example.

as i do see the benefit in both, but just really need this fixing as business is at an all time low right now

[RobertFisher]

Kelly

Here is the code per our dev:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com$ [OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com$

RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

This should assist you in getting it done correctly.

He also suggested that the PHP is not the way to go and it does not handle the url to url. So, there you have it.

Best

[kellymandingo]

Thanks Robert

Thats just a straight forward htaccess 301, makes sense to keep it simple

Again thank you for taking the time in getting back to me

[RobertFisher]

Kelly

Happy to help, but there are strings attached...No, you don't have to let me use the Maserati for a week next time I'm in town...

Before you put the change in effect, please run a measure of all DA/PA for both sites and date it. Then, weekly at least, rerun looking at both. Remember, you will be ask do you want to see the other url so you can still see both even though you have the redirects in place. 
Then, you will get a great view of the change over time and can track the effect which, whenever you see a similar question on moz you can refer back to.

If you chose to share that data with me, I promise to use the data anonymously and never share what site/sites or page/pages it was from. No plans to publish it in any way as of now, just started tracking sites with 301's about a year ago and like having some that we are not associated with other than tangentially.

Thanks, but no worries if you don't want to share, I understand.

Best

[kellymandingo]

Im sure i can do that for you, especially if your doing it for the good of education and science ..

If you mail me through the site your mail address ill let you have the analytic s too, so as you can see the visitors and the improvements and if all works well it should be a good graph as im currently around 60-70% short of what i had before

This is assuming that what i have already is actually wrong but would make a great topic for some

[kellymandingo]

Hi Robert

Htaccess uploaded, however the code you provided i think was relying on the sites sitting on the same I.P where in fact they are on different servers with different a I.P

so only the bottom line was needed , if we put your code up all looked good but some tools reported 403

Site explorer and site crawler now see the site as 301. so fingers crossed

Just need google to visit the old site and see the change and its not been there for ages , ill just ping it and add it to twitter or something