PDA

View Full Version : Page redirection without being penalized by the search engines

AshleyQuick
05-14-2004, 07:20 PM
I've been reading that using the meta refresh tag will lower your rankings. What are my alternatives for this (my index.html page):

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<html>
<head>
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=listings.asp?categoryID_list=1">
</head>

<body>



</body>
</html>
raf
05-15-2004, 12:48 PM
No idea what the impact on your ratings would be but

A)
delete index.html
create index.asp
put an asp response.redirect or server.transfer in index.asp

B) use a javascript onload to request listings.asp
liorean
05-15-2004, 01:38 PM
You're penalised for a number of reasons:
- Reduced signal to noise ration compared to not having the element in the source.
- Another "link" as the search engines see it, but not as well connected to the search words the original page was as that page. The only words that are considered relevant are those in the head of your document.

If you instead use a real redirect, neither of those penalties will affect you.
AshleyQuick
05-15-2004, 05:14 PM
I wound up using server.transfer:

<% Server.Transfer("listings.asp") %>

however, I really want to use this page:

listings.asp?categoryID_list=1

Problem is, the msdn website states that you cannot use a "?" among several other characters. Is this a workaround? They didn't mention any.

Ash
raf
05-15-2004, 06:21 PM
I wound up using server.transfer:

<% Server.Transfer("listings.asp") %>

however, I really want to use this page:

listings.asp?categoryID_list=1

Problem is, the msdn website states that you cannot use a "?" among several other characters. Is this a workaround? They didn't mention any.

Ash
If you wan't to have this categoryID_list=1 querystring, then you need to use the response.redirect method. like
<% response.redirect("listings.asp?categoryID_list=1") %
AshleyQuick
05-16-2004, 08:22 PM
If you wan't to have this categoryID_list=1 querystring, then you need to use the response.redirect method. like
<% response.redirect("listings.asp?categoryID_list=1") %>

That works but I wanted the url in the address bar to remain intact. I assume this isn't possible?
raf
05-16-2004, 10:48 PM
No.

You need to understand that response.redirect makes the browser request a new page, so the adres is changed to the last requested file..
server.transfer will change the 'focus' of the webserver to a new page (without clientside interaction), and then the adress in the browsers adressbar remains unchanged, but as far as i know, you can not append a querystring to the filename you server.transfer to. (easy to try out --> been a while since i wrote asp)
AshleyQuick
05-17-2004, 12:15 AM
NP, I get it now. Thanks for all the help. :thumbsup:

Ash