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apacheurlseocanonical-link

Massive URL Change

We need to make changes to an app that will cause all its URLS to change, we don't want to lose value, and have too many urls redirect to 301. I am looking to change a mod rewritten URL to a non-written one.

My thoughts would be to

  • Leave the mod rewritten URLS active (Temporarily)
  • Place a canonical tag with the NEW correct URL
  • Make sure no links are currently linking to old URLS - all internal links updated etc
  • Make sure our robots.txt and sitemap submissions are updated to date.

Would a massive change in URLs - even if backed up by canonical URLs and updated sitemap.xml - have a negative affect on listings in google?

What are peoples thoughts / experience in this?

Solution

  • Thinking about it, if you're using mod_rewrite and are wanting to switch to a non mod rewritten URL then the chances are you can make the changes purely by adding the 301 response to the end of your rewrite rule to make something like this:

    RewriteRule ^whatever/(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1/ [R=301,L]