Yahoo 301 Redirect indexing problem

[Rob]

Hi

I remember reading in another forum that Yahoo was working on the 301 redirect problem, yet many of my sites using this are still not getting indexed, yet they were before this was an issue.

I'm wondering if anyone knows the status of this problem? Is it something that Yahoo is working on and if so, when will it be fixed?

[DaveN]

they are still working on the 301 problem(s) no time scale as yet.

[Bernard]

Dave, if they are working on the problem (which would be a good thing since they are advising people to use them (http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/indexing/indexing-08.html)), why would their Sitematch representitives be advocating against them (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14978&perpage=10&pagenumber=1)?

[seobook]

Dave, if they are working on the problem (which would be a good thing since they are advising people to use them (http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/indexing/indexing-08.html)), why would their Sitematch representitives be advocating against them (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14978&perpage=10&pagenumber=1)?

something really smells fishy there...

[KevinSource]

Yahoo! Does not seem to be indexing the page that is redirected to. It does not, however, seem to be "booting" the page that is redirected. {I know i did not word that very well, but hopefully you know what I mean :confused: }

[Rob]

That is what I'm noticing too - sites that had hundreds or thousands of pages a few months ago, when Yahoo launched the new search, now have 1 - the 301 redirect page.

It doesn't make sense to me that it was working and now it's not? It's like the fixed it and broke it more (kinda like the way I do plumbing :) )

[St0n3y]

I 301 redirected a site several months ago. Google immediatly threw out the old site and after several long months began indexing the new. Yahoo still indexes both the old and new... and wouldn't you know it, rankings on the old still improve.

How is that even possible when there are no pages on the old server anymore to even view, just the 301 in place?

[DianeV]

Same data here. We reorganized some sites a while back, changing some URLs in the process. We've been 301 redirecting to the new URLs for months, removing a few each week, while we waited for Inktomi/Slurp to stop requesting the "old" URLs. Every other search spider picked up the new URLs, but not Yahoo. Considering the issues that Yahoo is having with 301 redirects, I finally just yanked them.

Of course, I have some pretty dandy 404 pages in place (ones that actually return a server 404, not just a 404 redirect to say, the site's site map).

Considering that it would be entirely do-able for Yahoo to detect 301s and drop old URLs in favor of new ones, I have to suspect they're doing this for a reason. I leave it to anyone's imagination.

[DaveN]

it's not that Yahoo can't detect the 301, But how the 301 can be abused thats their real problem until they fix that then the 301 should stay "broken"

DaveN

[DianeV]

Yes, that's precisely what I was hinting at. As inconvenient as it may be for webmasters wanting to redirect to the occasional moved page, I can see the point behind what appears to be Yahoo's logic.

Besides, Inktomi has behaved like this for ages.

[Jeff Martin]

Has anyone tried to sniff out the user agent (or use IP) for Y!s Slurp and push the spider to the new site? In ASP we use a response.redirect, I have no idea what your PHP people use. Until Y! decides to properly follow and conform to 301 redirects, perhaps this is a viable solution in the mean time?

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

As I understand Yahoo is aware of the situaration and I am pretty sure they are working hard to implement a solution.

However, there may very well be complexity levels to the case that we do not know about because we do not know exactly how Yahoo!Search function in detail. The best we can do is guess. And my guess is that Yahoo will soon have this problem fixed. Much sooner than we will be able to find valid "hacks" :)

[Tim]

I don't know if this is the right forum or not...

Before Yahoo launched Slurp, I counted on Inktomi and
their Directory to keep my site in Yahoo results.

After they launched Slurp, it picked up one of my
redirected urls off a link from another site and then
indexed the entire redirected site's content and urls.

Now all of my results in Yahoo are from their Slurp -
except the results are for my secondary url - not
my primary one.

To complicate matters further - sites are now linking
to the redirected url - causing duplicate sets of results
to be picked up and propogated to other engines.

Any suggestions as to how I get the correct url indexed in
Yahoo's search results?

[sem4u]

I know this is an old one but has anyone seen the problems fixed yet?

[KevinSource]

No, I have not seen any improvements. Yahoo! said they would have the problem fixed within weeks of the SES San Jose conference...still nothing.

[Tim]

So other people are having the same type of problem?

[Rob]

Hi

I checked and the few sites that I knew of that were having this problem have been indexed in the past few weeks.

I don't know if that means the problem is solved, but I do know that my sites are back in.

[Adam C]

That's good news Rob.

A client has just asked me about this.

Has anyone else seen anything that suggests its fixed?

(Want to get an idea of how widespread this is before I make a recommendation)

[DianeV]

I'm still seeing it in Yahoo in cases where the "secondary" domain name used to be the main one.

[DaveN]

it's still looks like it's broken from the test i ran two weeks ago