URL Redirects
The URL Redirect feature lets you redirect specific URLs on your site to specific pages. Replacing your site with a new responsive site temporarily affects your search engine rankings while Google and other search engines adjust to the changes.
Use the URL redirect feature to redirect your old page URLs to their new responsive site URLs and keep search engines happy.
To set up a URL redirect:
- In the left panel, click Settings, and then click URL Redirect.
- Click Add new redirect to manually create a URL redirect.
- Type the original URL to be redirected in the Old page name field. For example, if your site originally had a page yoursite.com/my-page.html, type /my-page.html.
- Select the redirect Destination page. You can choose to use a page from your new site or an external URL.
- To edit or delete your custom URL redirects, click Edit or Delete in the redirect menu.
URL Redirects are very useful if you have multiple sites that you want forwarded to your responsive site. Redirects are also important when you are switching domains or moving specific pages to a new domain. While URL redirects are very beneficial in these cases, they can also cause visitors confusion to which site they are visiting. When using redirects, make sure the visitor understands that they will be redirected so they do not mistake it for phishing attacks.
Redirect with URL Parameters
Specific URL redirects do not work on URL parameters. A URL parameter is anything that comes after the ? or # in the URL. Website Builder treats any URL with a URL parameter as the same URL.
That is, this URL: http://www.sitename.com/page1 is the same as this URL: http://www.sitename.com/page1?url_referrer=blank.
If you have a 301 redirect set up on page 1, it will also redirect any /page1 URL with a URL parameter. If you need a specific URL redirect for a URL parameter, please check with your DNS host to see if this is something they can set up for you.
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