Probably a stupid question, but . . . .

First, to the basic question, I wouldn't bother trying to redirect the dynamic URL at all. In my experience, Google can handle a URL like /common/essays.php?in=en&term=Dewberry just fine. Google does not handle really long dynamic URLs well or those with session IDs but no search engine does, yet. Again, not a Google problem but a spidering problem.

I've also seen it written many times in forums that using the meta refresh to redirect pages is inviting disaster with Google. It's still wrong. As long as you don't try to mislead anyone and use a brief delay before the refresh, that form of redirect is fine with Google. Moral: don't take everything you read in forums at face value -- a lot of times, it is a case of multiple posters reading some myth stated as fact and repeating it until eventually someone will say, "lots of people have said it so it must be true".

No. Google doesn't have a "problem" with 302 redirects, no matter what your "apparent expert" says. But Google does correctly recognize the 302 as a temporary redirect and acts accordingly. And it may be true that you have a problem somewhere in here, although I'm not sure why or where. I don't have a problem though.

 

I have just dispatched this emai to Google:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Google:

Your published Guidelines include the statement:

"If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a '?' character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them small."

(Presumably the word "pages" is a hasty mis-statement for "URLs", since a dynamically generated HTML page--say, as by PHP--almost invariably indistinguishable from a fully static HTML page.)

Since Google's spiders appear, by your statement above, to have some sort of difficulty parsing dynamic URLs, an obvious possibility for the website operator is to use a rewriting facility, such as mod_rewrite, to present a static-looking URL for the robots' convenience. But that raises the issue of what redirect code to use for any such rewrites.

The choices are obviously limited. A 301, the usually preferred redirect code, seems purposeless, since, after the first round of visit/redirect, the robots will be left with the same dynamic-form URL that the redirect was intended to avoid for them. (Presumably, the bots "memorize" the redirect-target URL and, in future, would try to go direct to it). But a 302 redirect, wrongly held bysome as only a "temporary" redirect (despite their being no language in the W3C
definition, not even in the HTTP Title, "Found", as opposed to the 301
"Permanently Moved", requiring a "reversion" of the target to the source URL), is said by many to cause the search engines to penalize pages for which a 302 remains in effect for any material length of time.

I would like to have a definitive Google ruling here on what Google wants us to do when we necessarily have pages with dynamic URLs. Do we:

1) leave the URLs exactly as they natively are, and _assume_ that the searchbots will properly find the subject pages?

2) do a 301 permanent redirect from a static form to the true, dynamic form?

3) do a 302 "Found" redirect from a static form to the true, dynamic form?

4) or so something not yet mentioned here? (And, if so, what?)

All I--and, I think, most website operators--want is to satisfy your Guidelines. Please help us to help you, with a little guidance here.

Thank you!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let us see what they say. (Other than "please read our guidelines" or "we have sent your message to our engineering team").

 

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought if you configured your .htaccess to hide the redirect it was transparent to the surfer and any bots, regardless of whether it was a 301 or a 302. (i.e. apache serves up the right page without any header information showing that it is a different page than the one you tried to go to.)

In the case of a page moved, you may want to alert the surfer, but in the case where you are slicing up dynamic parameters for an easier address, you do not want to alert them.

 

example:
.htaccess

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^foo.html$ bar.htm

PHP:

Response headers:

Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 00:06:55 GMT
Server: Apache
Vary: *
Last-Modified: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 22:46:04 GMT
Etag: "1b7248-39-418d542c"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 57
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html

PHP:

.htaccess

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^foo.html$ bar.htm [R=301,L]

PHP:

response headers:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 00:13:24 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://www.mydomain.net/bar.htm
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

PHP:

So... to answer your question, when you are doing re-write rules to better format urls for dynamic pages, don't use 301 or 302.

 

Hi Guys,

This is Kavitha. I m into SEO field. Any idea about next Google Dance? I want to know the expected effects and preventive measures on Google dance?

 

The next google dance will be on February 29th, 2005. Expected is a semantic anti-spam filter that will de-index all sites that contain gramatical errors (according to their published standards - which they have listed by language at www.google.com/thedance/grammar.html) within the first sentence of any published paragraph. Sites with more than three keyword sets within their keywords meta-tags will be penalized. Backlinks will be updated, but only for sites that have more than 50 new backlinks.

Prevention of rank-loss can be best accomplished by submitting your site to their good-sites listing - at www.google.com/nopenalties.html

Although, I'm not sure what your posting has to do with this thread...

 

Thankyou nevetS, but the links you have given are not at all there in the server!
I want to get quick reply (from SEO experts like you) to my queries that’s y I have posted here

 

He is pulling your leg. You should have started a new thread with your question.

 

My psychic mind tells me it'll be on the first week on March. IF that doesn't occur, go for hiberation cos last year Google started doing hap hazard updates. Even the motion of a ball on a football field could be predicted but not what Google is going to do.

I have freed myself from this PR obessesion recently. I used to post messages like you frantically and also found that this thing got on my nerves. Now, I have recuperated and concentrate more on other SEO factors.

Regards,
Dilip Samuel

 

I believe you'll find that February 29, 2005, is actually the first week of March.

 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . . .

Further research has turned up this. For a long time now, there has been a most serious problem with what came to be called "302 hijacking". As best I understand it--and I am not an expert on the topic--a sleazeball would get a domain and put little there but an .htaccess file with a 302-redirect from that domain to some victim domain. Owing to Google's infamous ineptness, the pirating domain would get all the pr/backlink benefit of the pirated victim domain, as the pages 302'ed to would then appear to belong to the pirate site. Or something like that, anyway--the details are not important here.

For, as I understand it, well over a year, webmasters were ragging on Google to do something about this issue. Now the needed response is instantly apparent to any modestly bright 11-year-old, and its implementation is probably within that same 11-year-old's technical capabilities, given access to Google's software: you simply treat 302-redirects to a domain other that the originally called one as equivalent to 404s. Anybody and everybody remains free to 302 away to their heart's content within their own domains, while would-be hijackers are foiled.

Ah, but this is Google we're dealing with. Forget what the W3C says HTTP Codes mean: Google, like M$, unilaterally redefines anything it wants however it wants. The Great And Powerful Goog simply decreed that any and every 302 remaining up for more than some brief time (I believe 48 hours is conjectured) incurs severe penalties.

This is not speculation. The notorious example is business.com, which went from a PR8 to a PR0 overnight because they were redirecting the "www" form of their name to the "plain" form with a 302. Anything stupider than Google's methods here will very easily make the Guiness Book of Records.

And, of course, as usual Google does not simply change things when people discover their "error" (which, in this case, is to assume that W3C standards mean what they say)--no, they make people wait for weeks or months before being let back into The Goog's throne room.

Wonderful, yes?

And perhaps the most frightening part of this is that Yahoo and M$ are even worse than Google. My, my, my.

 

Amazing. You start with a complicated solution to a non-problem (your example dynamic link doesn't need a rewrite to begin with), turn it into Google bashing aka "Google is broke" by trying to claim this is something Google invented and forced on webmasters of the world, and then somehow manage to morph that into a drive-by slash at Microsoft with that tired old "M$" gag again.

Owlcroft, why must you insist on believing this is some sort of Google (or is it Microsoft now? or both of them in cahoots?) conspiracy to annoy you? It's neither... it's simply a correct interpretation of a standard.

 

I look at it this way. Google is comprised of primarily two types of employee:

1. Engineers
2. English Proffessors

Lest we not forget that Google is a bit smarter than most of us, given the combined knowledge of soooooo many engineers and English professors, I tend to think they know what they are doing. Nothing is ever going to be perfect, but I am fairly confident that making a humbling statement, like "Google is smarter than the average webmaster", is a safe assertion.

I tend to concentrate my energies on building more content, qualtity links and give less of my brain capcity to complaining about why something is not working. If it is not working, try something else. It seems it takes a bit more energy to complain than it does to move on and go forward.