Everything after the # is ignored so this will not cause duplicate content issues. Crawlers will only see a single URL, i.e. http://www.mysite.co.uk/services

Just had a eureka moment with the issue as above!

All that was needed was a .htaccess on the old site like this:

Redirect 301 / http://www.newsite.com/

This attempts to pass a user/crawler to the equivalent page on the new site (which doesn't exist), so this is then handled with a .htaccess on the new site which then redirects to the new versions of those pages:

Redirect 301 /about.asp http://www.newwebsite.com/about (specific redirect 1) Redirect 301 /latest.asp http://www.newwebsite.com/news (specific redirect 1)

Simples!

Sorry, I should have been more clear. There are hundreds of vacancy ID's which change over time, so I need to use a rewrite rule to handle all cases now and in the future.

I'm currently working on a live version of a clients website which has duplication issues. With .htaccess, I need to rewrite URL's of the following format:

vacancy.php?id=802 to vacancy/?id=802

I tried adding the following line but it returned a 500, and don't want to keep taking the site out.

RewriteRule ^vacancy/?id=([0-9]+)$ vacancy.php?id=$1 [R=301, L]

I managed to strip out the '?q=' query with the htaccess below, but unfortunately this breaks the query. Any way around this?? (http://subdomain.example.com/select-a-card/?q=fuel)

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/$
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^q=fuel$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /fuel/? [R=301, L]

BEGIN WordPress

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

END WordPress

Ok, so how about if I make the ask a bit easier...

Whilst not an ideal solution, it would be good if I could just rewrite

http://subdomain.example.com/select-a-card/?q=fuel

to

http://subdomain.example.com/select-a-card/fuel/

...or ideally with a trailing slash too: http://subdomain.example.com/select-a-card/fuel/

Hi Ben,

Thanks for replying. Unfortunately I've tried the above and it's not working.

I've tried escaping everything, but still no joy. Could this be clashing with wordpress permalink redirects perhaps?

We’re using wordpress, and we have the following in the .htaccess:

BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /

RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d

RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

END WordPress

We have a URL like http://subdomain.example.com/select-a-card/?q=fuel, and I want to rewrite it so that it becomes http://subdomain.example.com/fuel-card/

What do I need to add to the htaccess to do this??

Thanks,

That works perfectly, thank you very much

Thanks for the response Alan.

However, the problem is with the old URL's, so where they have a trailing slash I cannot get them to redirect to any URL's of the new structure (with a trailing slash or otherwise.).

To simplify the ask, how do I put in place a 301 redirect from 'http://www.example.com/example_folder/' to some other URL?

I'm having real trouble with getting working redirects in place to use on a site we're re-launching with a modified url structure.

Old URL: http://www.example.com/example_folder/

New URL: http://www.example.com/example-of-new-folder/

Now, where the old URL's have a trailing slash the web.config simply will not accept it. It says the URL can start with a slash, but not end with a slash. However, many of my URL's do end with a slash so I need a workaround.

These are the rules I'm putting in place:

<location path="example_folder/"></location>

Thanks

Are you just trying to streamline your product pages, or are you experiencing a specific issue with your product pages that you're hoping this will solve?

Linking to the PDF's via a javascript function should help preserve link juice and crawl budget.

You should only add those PDF's that have been indexed to the robots.txt if you absolutely do not want them in the index, otherwise it won't really do anything to help.

Are the PDF's currently being crawled and indexed?

If you want to hide the PDF's from search engines, and preserve link juice, then a javascript method like you've mentioned ought to keep things wrapped up.

You could also consider some data capture, such as requiring an e-mail address to be entered before you see the download link.

Ok, thanks Alan. I'll nag the devs again.

An update on this...

I've tried to create a web.config file containing around 1000 redirects from the old version of an ecommerce site to the new version of the site.

They've kept the same domain, but the URL structure is completely different so really I need all the redirects I've pieced together to be put in place. However, the web.config is too big and breaks the site.

In the interim I'm going to cut down the web.config file until it works, but I this isn't an ideal solution.

Any ideas?

You have to disable google instant predictions in your search settings, if you really wanted to know! Bit daft isn't it.

Thanks for the responses.

OK, so generally you'd try and have a specific redirect in place for all URL's on the existing site.

I understand then that I should create a more comprehensive set of redirects, but I'm unsure about the IHttpModule. What is the reason you've suggested this method as opposed to setting up redirects directly within the web.config using rules like this:

<location path="services.htm"></location>

Thanks again, Matt

We're launching a new site for our client on their existing domain, and as many of the URL's are changing we need to create some webconfig redirects.

However, rather than create a webconfig file which redirects each page on the existing site to a corresponding page on the new site, I was hoping to create redirect rules for the top landing pages only, and then have a catch all which redirects all other URL's to the homepage.

How would you set this up in a webconfig file?