Hi, In my store I have noticed that the 301 redirect does not seem to be working for products which no longer exist. For example, the page will show the message 'Sorry, this product is not currently available.' and seems to have a 404 return code when checked at https://monitorbacklinks.com/seo-tools/http-header-status-check

In includes I have this
$seodetailurls=TRUE;
$seocategoryurls=TRUE;
$detlinkspacechar="_";
$seocaturlpattern="/childrens/%s";
$seoprodurlpattern="/clothes/%s";
$seomanufacturerpattern="/brand/%s";
$seourlsthrow301=TRUE;
$usecategoryname=TRUE;

and in htacess

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mysite.co.uk
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.mysite.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^childrens/([^/.]*)/?$ /categories.php?cat=$1 [QSA,nc,L,B]
RewriteRule ^clothes/([^/.]*)/?$ /products.php?cat=$1 [QSA,nc,L,B]
RewriteRule ^brand/([^/.]*)/?$ /products.php?man=$1 [QSA,nc,L,B]
RewriteRule ^([^/.]+)$ proddetail.php?prod=$1 [QSA,nc,L,B]
</IfModule>


Also I'm not sure I understand the 301 exactly - I always thought this was to redirect to another page, but I don't seem to have specified the replacement page anywhere. Please can you help / clarify?



Many thanks
Ellen

Hi Ellen

The 301 redirect tells the search engines that if it finds proddetail.php?prod=myproduct to redirect that permanently to /myproduct. If a product no longer exists there's no redirect as there's nothing to redirect it to so you will get a 404

Andy

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Thanks for the explanation Andy, that makes sense now!