[ic] Mod_rewrite & mod_interchange & short urls

Fri Apr 20 13:40:28 EDT 2007

David Bordas <bordas at testadaz.com> wrote:
> When i move (or rename) a page that's already in google index, i always 
> use Redirect 301 to point to the new one from the old one.
> So google spider will remove my old url format and replace it by the new 
> one.
> But, in this case, i can't find a way to make a generic redirect 301 
> without breaking searches. Did someone make this before ?
> 
> Perhaps should i make a redirect (via apache mod_rewrite) for each of my 
> category ?
> 
Well, I suppose you could take advantage of the fact that the default
search results page is called results.html, and do something like
following:

    * Move results.html to search_results.html, or similar.

    * Modify your ActionMap to make use of this new page.

    * Modify any search boxes you have to make use of this new page.

    * Edit results.html to just contain something like this:

        [tag op=header]
        Status: 404 Not Found
        Content-type: text/html
        [/tag]

        <html>
        <head>
        </head>
        <body>
            <h1>Begone, pesky spider!</h1>
        </body>
        </html>

When search engine spiders attempt to verify existing scan URIs, they
will hit the default results.html page, get a 404 code and remove the
entry from their index.

The spiders will follow your new ActionMap-based category links,
see pages as before and index them as usual.

Ordinary users will not notice any difference, unless they have
bookmarked a scan page.

The above depends upon various factors, such as your current use of
the default results.html page.  If you're using different results
pages for different things then you'll need to adjust the above
accordingly.

You can put it all back together again after a couple of months or so,
or just leave it as-is.

I've only put five seconds of thought into this, but it looks like a
plan to me.

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