301 redirect

Hi

I have two urls that land on the exact same page.

One is an old url and not used on our site anymore.

Our developer has told me that you do not use 301 redirects when you just change a url of a page as it is the exact same page.

Can someone please tell me how to handle this. I have two urls - that land on the exact same page. I do not want Google to index the old url for fear of duplicate content. How do I stop Google indexing the old url ?

Thank you

Your developers suggest you the right thing. Just do a 301 redirection from the Old domain to the New one. When any one will try to reach the old one he/she will land at the new URL.

When google will read the redirection completely, they will drop the old URL.

Hi Hilary,
Your post is a little confusing... It sounds to me like your developers are incorrect.

If the old url isn't used on the site anymore, how is it now "landing on the exact same page"?

If you change the url of a page you should add a 301 redirect from the old url to the new one.

If you have 2 urls returning the same content you do have a problem.
You could us a "robots noindex metatag" on the old page, to stop Google from indexing it - or you could add the url to your robots.txt file to stop Google from spidering it... But - Like I said - a 301 redirect is the "normal" way!

Sorry about the confusion!

We have 2 urls that bring you to the exact same page.

One of these urls is an old url - written a few years ago for seo purposes. This was rewritten last year.

But nothing was done with the old url. So if you use either url you are brought to the exact same page.

Our developer says that we do not need 301 redirects when you change a url as it is the same page and Google will just drop it eventually as it is not linked to from our website.

But it may be linked from elsewhere. And how long is "eventually" anyway? Agreed, it's not going to see you banned from Google, but best practice is still best practice. Put up a 301, then you can rest easy.

So I am correct in saying to our developer ....

That when you rewrite a url for a page
for example from
www.myhomepage/uk/cars/uk-cars-for-sale-in-greater-uk
to
www.myhomepage/uk/uk-cars-for-sale

that you should always put a 301 redirect on the old url as Google can index both urls and conisder it duplicate content.

I am double checking as our developer is saying I am wrong.

We have many many urls that take you to the same page.

Thank you

you are actually more correct then the developers. The old url will be de indexed but the issue is that any old links that go to the old page are worthless... You should 301 the old page to the new page to give the new page more power then the old.

Thanks a million

Really appreciate the useful help and advice

Now i have to face the developers

Yep, both versions are likely to be indexed. A 301 would be easy to construct. Taking your example URL, the primary difference would appear to be the removal of the /cars/ pseudo subfolder. If that's consistant with all these rewritten URLs, then a very simple redirect checker would be:


Personally I think your developer is just being lazy. I'm also struggling to see what benefit you'd get from changing all the URLs -- there's so little difference between the two versions that it's not going to have any noticeable impact on your SERPs.

Hi

Thank you again for the advice.

They are actually totally made up urls

Just my little addition. Make sure the url in the address bar changes as a result of the redirect. If it doesnt its not a 301 it will be a 302 (indexed and ranked separately sometimes).

Its a bit easier for the developer to do a 302. It you want to really make sure use a free program called fiddler.