Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How to set up 301 redirect for URL with question mark

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How to set up 301 redirect for URL with question mark

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    2
    4331
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • robotseo
      robotseo last edited by

      I have encountered some issue with 301 redirect and htaccess file.

      I need to redirect the following url:

      http://www.domain.com/?specifications=colours/page/3

      to:

      http://www.domain.com/colours

      The 301 redirect command I wrote in htaccess file is as follow:

      Redirect 301 /?specifications=colours/page/3 http://www.domain.com/colours

      And it doesn't work at the moment. What is the correct way to set up 301 redirect here?

      Your help will be sincerely appreciated!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Ben_Alvord
        Ben_Alvord last edited by

        You might want to try escaping the question mark, so:

        /?specifications

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • 1 / 1
        • First post
          Last post

        Got a burning SEO question?

        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


        Start my free trial


        Browse Questions

        Explore more categories

        • Moz Tools

          Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

        • SEO Tactics

          Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

        • Community

          Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

        • Digital Marketing

          Chat about tactics outside of SEO

        • Research & Trends

          Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

        • Support

          Connect on product support and feature requests.

        • See all categories

        Related Questions

        • MAdeit

          Is there any benefit to changing 303 redirects to 301?

          A year ago I moved my marketplace website from http to https. I implemented some design changes at the same time, and saw a huge drop in traffic that we have not recovered from. I've been searching for reasons for the organic traffic decline and have noticed that the redirects from http to https URLs are 303 redirects. There's little information available about 303 redirects but most articles say they don't pass link juice. Is it worth changing them to 301 redirects now? Are there risks in making such a change a year later, and is it likely to have any benefits for rankings?

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAdeit
          0
        • seoaustin

          Old URL that has been 301'd for months appearing in SERPs

          We created a more keyword friendly url with dashes instead of underscores in December.  That new URL is in Google's Index and has a few links to it naturally.  The previous version of the URL (with underscores) continues to rear it's ugly head in the SERPs, though when you click on it you are 301'd to the new url.  The 301 is implemented correctly and checked out on sites such as http://www.redirect-checker.org/index.php. Has anyone else experienced such a thing? I understand that Google can use it's discretion on pages, title tags, canonicals, etc.... But I've never witnessed them continue to show an old url that has been 301'd to a new for months after discovery or randomly.

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoaustin
          0
        • FPK

          Hacked website - Dealing with 301 redirects and a large .htaccess file

          One of my client's websites was recently hacked and I've been dealing with the after effects of it. The website is now clean of malware and I already appealed to Google about the malware issue. The current issue I have is dealing with the 20, 000+ crawl errors which are garbage links that were created from the hacking. How does one go about dealing with all the 301 redirects I need to create for all the 404 crawl errors? I'm already noticing an increased load time on the website due to having a rather large .htaccess file with a couple thousand 301 redirects done already which I fear will result in my client's website performance and SEO performance taking a hit as well.

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPK
          0
        • shloy23-294584

          SEO impact difference between a URL Rewrite and 301 redirect

          Hi guys and girls! Just putting a new site live, we changed the URL from one thing to another and I created a 301 file redirecting the urls like for like. The developer installing it has created a different file with columns like: RewriteRule ^page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] RewriteRule ^/page/ http://www.site/page [R=301,L] What's the difference? The page redirects but is there a difference between the 301 redirect and this URL rewrite in terms of SEO and link value?

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shloy23-294584
          0
        • lcourse

          Is it a problem to use a 301 redirect to a 404 error page, instead of serving directly a 404 page?

          We are building URLs dynamically with apache rewrite.
          When we detect that an URL is matching some valid patterns, we serve a script which then may detect that the combination of parameters in the URL does not exist. If this happens we produce a 301 redirect to another URL which serves a 404 error page, So my doubt is the following: Do I have to worry about not serving directly an 404, but redirecting (301) to a 404 page? Will this lead to the erroneous original URL staying longer in the google index than if I would serve directly a 404? Some context. It is a site with about 200.000 web pages and we have currently 90.000 404 errors reported in webmaster tools (even though only 600 detected last month).

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
          0
        • ocelot

          Php 301 redirect

          Hi I am migrating an old wordpress site to a custom PHP site and the URL profiles will be different, so want to retain all link profiles and more importantly if a user visits the old urls via search then they are seamlessly transferred to the new equivalent page For example www.domain.com/about-us is going to need to redirect to www.domain.com/aboutus.php www.domain.com/furniture is going to need to redirect to www.domain.com/furniture-collections.php etc What is the best way of achieving this apart from .htaccess as not 100% confident of doing this.  Could it be done via PHP or using meta tags?

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ocelot
          0
        • jasondexter

          Multiple 301 redirects for a HTTPS URL. Good or bad?

          I'm working on an ecommerce website that has a few snags and issues with it's coding. They're using https, and when you access the website through domain.com, theres a 301 redirect to http://www.domain.com and then this, in turn, redirected to https://www.domain.com. Would this have a deterimental effect or is that considered the best way to do it. Have the website redirect to http and then all http access is redirected to the https URL? Thanks

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasondexter
          0
        • Travis-W

          Multiple 301 Redirects for the Same Page

          Hi Mozzers, What happens if I have a trail of 301 redirects for the same page? For example,
          SiteA.com/10 --> SiteA.com/11 --> SiteA.com/13 --> SiteA.com/14 I know I lose a little bit of link juice by 301 redirecting.
          The question is, would the link juice look like this for the example above? 100% --> 90% --> 81% -->72.9%
          Or just 100% -----------------------------------------> 90% Does this link juice refer to juice from inbound links or links between internal pages on my site? Thanks!

          Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
          0

        Get started with Moz Pro!

        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

        Start my free trial
        Products
        • Moz Pro
        • Moz Local
        • Moz API
        • Moz Data
        • STAT
        • Product Updates
        Moz Solutions
        • SMB Solutions
        • Agency Solutions
        • Enterprise Solutions
        • Digital Marketers
        Free SEO Tools
        • Domain Authority Checker
        • Link Explorer
        • Keyword Explorer
        • Competitive Research
        • Brand Authority Checker
        • Local Citation Checker
        • MozBar Extension
        • MozCast
        Resources
        • Blog
        • SEO Learning Center
        • Help Hub
        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
        • How-to Guides
        • Moz Academy
        • API Docs
        About Moz
        • About
        • Team
        • Careers
        • Contact
        Why Moz
        • Case Studies
        • Testimonials
        Get Involved
        • Become an Affiliate
        • MozCon
        • Webinars
        • Practical Marketer Series
        • MozPod
        Connect with us

        Contact the Help team

        Join our newsletter
        Moz logo
        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
        • Accessibility
        • Terms of Use
        • Privacy

        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.