Redirect Hell for .Net site

[lyoung]

I am having problems communicating with a programmer about 301 redirects.
The site was recently redesigned and combined with another site. This of course created thousands of orphaned pages. I explained the need for 301 redirects. I created a file for them with all the pages that were currently being indexed in Yahoo, MSN and Google. We then matched up those with the new URLS and turned it over to the programmer to set up redirects. I created a Google site map about 2 weeks ago but am still seeing the old pages in the index.

I checked the server headers today and they appear to be returning a 302 instead of a 301 ... but then there's some other data about a 301 so I'm really not sure. I don't want to get into it with the developer unless I'm really sure this is screwed up.

Here's what the header says:
#1 Server Response: http://www.domain.com/old_page.asp
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 19:09:43 GMT
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Location: /301Redirect.aspx?404;http://www.domain.com/old_page.asp
Redirect Target: /301Redirect.aspx?404;http://www.domain.com/old_page.asp

Can anyone familiar with .net explain what's going on here??

[ihelpyou]

My firm is working on a redesign for a .net right now and I know for a fact that is not the right redirect code. It shows a 302 response which simply tells the se's the redirect is temporary only. They will keep the old pages using that code.

The big problem with "most" designers/programmers is that they have no idea about search engines.

I'll see if I can get you the correct code, or maybe someone in here has it handy.

[lyoung]

Thanks Doug!

I knew it wasn't set up correctly. Any help would be appreciated along with a translation guide for speaking to programmers who just don't get SEO.

[ihelpyou]

That's why you should never use your client's programmers to do anything. You need to find people and work with them only, and train them the right way. :)

Using a client's people to get things done is truly pulling teeth.

[ihelpyou]

btw; I'll have the code tomorrow if someone else doesn't post it before then.

[lyoung]

No kidding. Sadly, I was actually trying to build a partnership with these developers. However after this recent experience with everything from the redirects to the sloppy code and unfriendly URLS ... I'm cutting ties with them.

I'd love to see the .net fix for this mess. I think that they put all the redirects in a file. If a 404 is hit, it checks the file for a match and redirects. If there's no match they send users to the home page instead of a custom 404 page. Is that a problem too?

[g1smd]

The 302 redirect will mean that the OLD URLs for the pages will hang around in the index for a very long time, and as they are duplicate content of, and have higher Pagerank than, the new URLs for the pages, many of the new pages (new URL for the page, that is) will simply drop out of the index.


Additionally, you'll also see that eventually most of your content will be indexed as:

http://www.olddomain.com/301Redirect.aspx?404;http://www.domain.com/old_page.asp

or some such nonsense. They haven't done a 301 redirect at all; and seemingly have no clue as to what to do.



When you try to access:

http://www.olddomain.com/somepage.html

you should get:

Status: 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://www.newdomain.com/new.page.name.html

Use WebBug to check it out.