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We recently updated our website to a completely different structure on a completely separate server. We are going to be sending all traffic to the new site and I am trying to figure out how to have any requests from search engines that will no longer exist, be redirected to the new pages. Is my only option to move the contents of the old site in with the new site, and then set the page properties to be redirected to the new pages? When doing research I came across .htaccess files and they seemed to do what I am looking for, but it looks like they are only available on apache servers, not IIS 6 servers. Is it possible to have a 301 redirect in IIS 6, without needing the old files on the server?

brian-francis
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3 Answers3

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This product may be of service:

http://www.isapirewrite.com/

It's like mod_rewrite (for apache) except you have to pay for it (no, I don't work for the company that develops it).

To use it, you would write rules that redirect the old structure to the new one. Depending on the changes made, this could be extremely easy or ridiculously time-consuming.

UPDATE:

See: http://www.isapirewrite.com/docs/#RewriteRule

RP (permanent redirect)

 Almost the same as the [R] flag but issues 301 (moved permanently) HTTP 
 status code instead of 302 (moved temporary).

Example:

RewriteRule ^/my-super-product\.html$ /Product.aspx?ProductID=123 [RP]
Swoogan
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  • Hi Swoogan, I pretty much have the same question that I asked Home Boy above. From what I have read people are suggesting doing 301 redirects as the best way to tell search engines the page has been moved. Does this software handle redirects in this way? – brian-francis Oct 30 '09 at 15:25
  • The update that Swoogan posted means yes. – Shea Daniels Oct 30 '09 at 16:16
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Try Ionic's Isapi Rewrite Filter available at http://iirf.codeplex.com/ (endorsed by Microsoft)

Its free (Donationware) & serves your purpose. Here's a little text from their site: What is URL Rewriting good for? Lots of things. Some people use IIRF to allow his community site to expose Search-Engine-Friendly URLs.

hth's

Home Boy
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  • Does this allow for 301 redirects? I am not familiar with doing this but from what I read, it seemed that people were saying the best way to tell a search engine that a page has been moved is through a 301 redirect. I really don't want to have to keep old files on the server to set them to redirect but I want to approach this in the best way from an SEO perspective. – brian-francis Oct 30 '09 at 15:18
  • yes it allows 301's, u dont have to keep ur old files. try out the rewrite filter on a section of ur website and see its results on the search engine ratings, b4 rolling our across ur website(s) – Home Boy Nov 10 '09 at 20:43
  • IIRF does URL rewriting, like Apache's mod_rewrite. It can do redirects as well, with 301, 302, or any of the 300 HTTP return codes. You specify it as [R=301], or [R=302], etc. It runs on IIS6 or 7. – Cheeso Dec 02 '09 at 20:28
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In IIS you can right click on any part of a domain / folder/ even file, and change the setting for "FILE" select "A redirection to a URL" Specify the url to the new item and then select the boxes needed for your redirect. whether it is the exact url as entered. A permanent redirection.

  • This would require me to have the old directories and/or files on the server still though right? Then I would tell IIS to do the redirect. Any idea as to how long we might have to keep these old files in place? – brian-francis Oct 30 '09 at 15:15