Do Redirects "Count" as Links?

[Owlcroft]

I gather from material found in many places that Google recognizes exact URLs only--that is, that to Google, http://www.mydomain.com/index.html and http://mydomain.com/index.html are different pages. (If that is, to anyone's understanding not so, please post!).

Assuming that it is correct, I have two questions.

1) Does Google also see http://mydomain.com/ and http://mydomain.com/index.shtml as two different pages? What about http://mydomain.com/ and http://mydomain.com (no trailing slash)?

2) If Site A provides a link to http://www.mydomain.com and that site is set to respond to that URL by sending a 301 redirect to http://mydomain.com (or, in general, to 301-redirect any call to http://www.mydomain.com* to http:/mydomain.com*), how does Google treat the link for purposes of determining back-link counts? Will it "credit" the link to the forwarded address, or only to the originally linked form?

The very practical question that derives from this is the degree to which I should be diligent in pursuing sites of significant PR that link to my site in a noncanonical form to update their link.

[digitalpoint]

301 redirects are the best thing to do. www.domain.com and domain.com are two different things in Google's "eyes".

- Shawn

[Owlcroft]

Sorry, I appreciate the answer, but I'd like to be sure I'm getting it exactly right.

Does a 301-redirect "transform" a link into a link to the new address for backlink-count and page-rank purposes? If I have a 301-redirect in place, can I safely relax as far as links to the noncanonical form go?

Also: are domain.com and domain.com/ the same or different pages?

Thanks for the help!

[digitalpoint]

Sorry, I appreciate the answer, but I'd like to be sure I'm getting it exactly right.

Does a 301-redirect "transform" a link into a link to the new address for backlink-count and page-rank purposes? If I have a 301-redirect in place, can I safely relax as far as links to the noncanonical form go?
Yes.


Also: are domain.com and domain.com/ the same or different pages?
Same because the web server will redirect people to domain.com/ (try it in your browser).

- Shawn

[Owlcroft]

I asked because I have a noncanonical link from a site whose main page--at least--is PR7, and the link does not show on Google's links-to-me list. Must I suppose, then, that the actual linking page has a PR under 4? (I guess so, as it also does not show on links to the www. form of ther name--I have to stop using that here, as Google counts it too as a "link" to the noncanonical form!).

Does that mean, then, that as soon as after my 301 setup as Google finishes visiting all pages, all references in their collection to the "www." form will disappear? Can I check "progress" by looking for remaining links to the "www." form?

[digitalpoint]

If you 301 a page, the links will show up for the destination of the 301.

- Shawn

[Owlcroft]

Thank you again. Sorry to have seemed unduly obtuse, but I wanted to be, as the TV ads say, absolutely, positively certain I was handling the linkage problem ok with 301s. That is a weight, and a big one, off my mind: it is hard enough to get links, especially from amateur webmasters, but worse yet to get extant ones updated.

Now: does anyone know when Google will start reading links through JavaScript hiding? (I have noticed that several large, high-PR sites, at least in my sandbox, give "links" that way.)

[theblade24]

Is there a method of redirecting domain.com to www.domain.com except for https calls?

I would like to do a 301 redirect but can't because when my cart calls the secure domain it gets blown out to the www version.

Is there a was in htaccess to exclude calls to https?

[digitalpoint]

Yep... check it in this thread. Notice it's setup to only redirect requests on port 80.

- Shawn

[theblade24]

Ok, checked it out. I'm trying to use these lines in my htaccess file, not conf, and it doesnt seem to work, it hangs the site,500 server error.

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^itsalreadysigned4u.com(:80) ?$
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.itsalreadysigned4u.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Is the syntax wrong somehow?

[digitalpoint]

Never tried it in an .htaccess file, only conf file. Also, check the httpd error log to see what the specific error is.

- Shawn

[theblade24]

/home/theblade/public_html/.htaccess: RewriteCond: bad flag delimiters

[digitalpoint]

No idea... maybe it doesn't work in .htaccess...

- Shawn

[Owlcroft]

I am about the very last human on Earth to whom anyone would turn for advice on mod_rewrite, but I do have an analogous statement that works for me.

You have:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^itsalreadysigned4u.com(:80) ?$
RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.itsalreadysigned4u.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I have (to rewrite calls to www.etc to just etc):

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} www.greatsfandf.com
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://greatsfandf.com/$1 [L,R=301]

The only differences I can see are the slash in the first term of your rewrite rule, and the order of the terms in brackets in the conditions. You might just try those on an experimental basis; I have no idea why one would work and not another, but apparently even experts consider this stuff to be largely voodoo.