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.
Why is Google not following a 301 redirect on the robots.txt file?
-
Hi Guys,
I recently posted a question on the Google Webmasters Forum http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=683e71557db7fd54&hl=en&fid=683e71557db7fd540004a4b4add8cbb6 and didn't get a satisfactory feedback so I thought I will put this to the SEO gurus on here. Perhaps one of you guys might good buddies with Matt and might be able to ask him directly. I actually posted on Matt's blog but he hasn't got back to me.
Basically we did a URL restructure for client and set up 301 redirects and saw a huge drop in rankings over time. The 301 redirects seem to work fine and have been tested by many many people. We suspected that google might be ignoring the 301 redirects or devaluing them and so I reviewed the server log to see what is happening when the googlebot crawls the site and it showed that on many occasions the googlebot did not reload the page after hitting a 301 redirect.
Sure.. you might say it probably queues it or Google might just be checking that the 301 redirect is still in place but why check so often (with a few hours to a day on the same URL) it even skips a 301 redirect on the robots.txt file i.e. from http://clientsite.com/robots.txt to http://www.clientsite.com/robots.txt. from non-www to www version.
I don't think it is easy to dismiss the skipping of the robots.txt file - this 301 redirect should be loaded immediately to use the instructions the gooblebot requires to crawl the page.
Any help will be appreciated. I can sent the server log to anyone personally but I am reluctant to post it on here.
Regards,
Zan
-
Thanks John, I check the robots.txt redirect and it is redirecting fine from the non-www version to the www version. I also know that G is crawling the site because we can see requests by G in the server log. Also as with the case with the other 301 redirects there were cases G followed the 301 redirect on the robots.txt file but also many cases where it didnt.
-
Hi Zan-
Check out this thread:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=23404
Reading it through, I thought comments #8 and #11 might be of interest to you.
-John
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.
Related Questions
-
slug Link redirect to subdomain?
Hi !
Link Building | | Leviiii
Im Levi new here and new in the world of SEO, please dont judge if my questions are silly. Back on the days when the site was built we thought it is a good ideea to have subdomains that together with the domain name represent our main keywords.
ex. https://stansted.tonorwich.uk, https://heathrow.tonorwich.uk, https://luton.tonorwich.uk, https://gatwick.tonorwich.uk. There is content on this subdomains, would it make any difference from SEO perspective if we create slugs that redirect to these subdomains? for example creating https://tonorwich.uk/taxi-minibus-vip-tesla-norwich-to-stansted that redirects to https://stansted.tonorwich.uk ? Or better create these slugs with slightly different content?
Any ideeas would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!0 -
Redirecting dofollow, high-domain-authority links from one site to another: good idea?
I have two sites that offer help for freelance writers. The first gets almost no search traffic and is very low priority for me. The second is my main priority and gets substantial search traffic. The low-priority site has a significant number of dofollow backlinks from high-domain-authority sites. Is it a good idea to 301 redirect these links to similar/related posts on my high-priority site? Would this potentially boost the SEO of my high-priority site? Thanks for any help!
Link Building | | John88990 -
Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.
Hi,
Link Building | | JIMBO16
I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website. I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice. What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging? Thanks, Jim0 -
Redirects affect on page and domain authority
Hi - excuse me if this is stupid question but I'm rather new to this. Currently the PA for the home page is 16 and the DA 28 and I have some concerns that my efforts are being diluted. When I use OSE on www.sassandgrace.co.uk I get different link results to sassandgrace.co.uk but there is a redirect in place to sassandgrace.co.uk and cannot run a crawl report, for example, on www.sassandgrace.co.uk. The PA and DA are identical for each but the number of links different With a smallish number of links pointing to each but with a redirect in place, am I losing some of the effect or is having the redirect in place giving me all the credit for links to both addresses? Thanks
Link Building | | Sassandgrace0 -
Does Google Groups and Google Community links count?
Hello Everyone. I noticed when I added a few links from Google Groups and Google Communities. It has a do follow? Does that mean it help your SERPS? Thanks for you help?
Link Building | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT0 -
How to Manually Check if Link is Follow or No Follow?
So I just got the link - yippee! When I look at the source code href line with my url I don't see the term 'no follow'. Does this mean I have a followed link?
Link Building | | Clicksjim0 -
Could google recognize urls in data-attributes?
Hi, could google's crawler recognize the following example as a link and will be crawl the url? any experience? ty for your help
Link Building | | censeo0 -
Site stuck on 2nd page on Google - how can it improve?
Hi I am working on a site http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk that for search terms such as 'Chartered Accountants Swansea' appears near the top of the 2nd page of Google. When looking at what is listed on the 1st page for 'Chartered Accountants Swansea' I would appreciate any advice/guidance on what else could be done to give the site a final push to get on the 1st page of search results. Over the past 2 weeks I have been building inbound links from local citation sites yelp, qype etc along with sites from competitor analysis via opensiteexplorer. Looking at the sites that are on the 1st page I cant understand why many of them are ranking higher than me? Any insight and plan of attack would be most appreciated from any search experts on the forum. Many Thanks
Link Building | | idv0