Why is Googlebot getting a 301 redirect?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by firewolf08, Oct 13, 2009.

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  1. #1
    Why is this happening? All of my WP sub-pages like /services /about are seen as a 301-redirect when Googlebot crawls them, but my main page is fine. This is the result of the Fetch as Googlebot tool for the sub-pages of my sites:

    HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
    Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:41:36 GMT
    X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.10
    Location: http:// mysite.com/services/
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

    but then Googlebot see a HTTP/1.1 200 OK header for my main page.

    I also do the information command "info:mysite.com/services" in Google and nothing comes up, even though it IS indexed.

    It HAS to be something with my WP theme, but I can't figure it out and it seems like the 301 will be hurting my ranking with those pages on my site that can't be seen by Google because of the 301 redirect.
     
    firewolf08, Oct 13, 2009 IP
  2. willybfriendly

    willybfriendly Peon

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    #2
    Have you checked to see what headers your pages are returning? There are plugins for Firefox that will check headers for you, or you can find any number of web based tools to do the same.

    Also, I would check to see what kind of SEO plugins you might be using for WP. It could be that you are getting a redirect rather than a rewrite, although I am only speculating since I am not all that familiar with WP.
     
    willybfriendly, Oct 13, 2009 IP
  3. firewolf08

    firewolf08 Peon

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    #3
    I actually do have a webmaster toolbar for Firefox-- checked the headers for all the pages on my site with it and they are all coming back with the 200 OK header.

    But- I've used various other 'response header' checkers on the internet, such as the one found here--- http://www.seoconsultants.com/tools/headers.asp and other places and the result is that my top level domain returns a 200 OK response, but the sub-pages return a 301 Permanently Moved just as the Googlebot does.

    So I'm not sure which to believe at this point, but seeing as how the Fetch as Googlebot tool comes up with 301 redirects for all my subpages and the "Info:" command in Google also turns up no results when I enter specific subpages of mine, that is definitely a concern.

    I guess in theory it could be the result of a new Wordpress theme that I installed and I could try replacing that with something else. I might try that and see what kind of result I get.
     
    firewolf08, Oct 13, 2009 IP