301 Redirect for Query String on Root?

Question

I have tried multiple methods of trying to redirect some URLs with a query string on the root, for example, if I try to match the URL http://example.com/?bloginfo=racing

Redirect 301 "/?bloginfo=racing" http://example.com/racing

or

RedirectMatch 301 ^/?bloginfo=racing$ http://example.com/racing

The condition will never match. Is there a good method for this inside of my .htaccess file to write this kind of redirect?

Answer 1

If you want to match the query string you need to use mod_rewrite and check the QUERY_STRING server variable in a RewriteCond directive. mod_alias directives (ie. Redirect and RedirectMatch match the URL-path only, not the query string).

For example, to redirect http://example.com/?bloginfo=racing to http://example.com/racing you could do something like the following:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^bloginfo=racing$
RewriteRule ^$ /racing? [R=302,L]

The trailing ? on the substitution is required in order to remove the query string from the request, otherwise, it is passed through to the target URL. Alternatively, use the QSD flag on Apache 2.4+

Change the 302 (temporary) to 301 (permanent) if this is intended to be permanent and only when you are sure it's working OK (to avoid caching problems).

To make this more generic and redirect /?bloginfo=<something> to /<something> then you can do something like the following:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^bloginfo=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^$ /%1? [R=302,L]

%1 is a backreference to the captured subpattern in the last match CondPattern.