So you want to implement JavaScript redirects but aren’t sure how they work?
Yes, they are more difficult to implement than standard redirects.
Ideally, you should use 301, 302, or 307-based redirects for implementation. This is standard best practice.
But… what if you don’t have that level of access? What if you have a problem creating default redirects in a way that benefits the site as a whole?
This is where using JavaScript redirects comes into play.
However, they are not a best practice that you should use exclusively.
But there are situations where you just can’t avoid using a JavaScript redirect.
The following is a basic introduction to JavaScript redirects, when to use them, how to use them, and best practices to use when using these types of redirects for SEO.
What Are JavaScript Redirects?
JavaScript redirects are essentially one of several methods to notify users and web crawlers that a page is available elsewhere.
They’re often used to notify users of changes in the URL structure, but they can be used for almost anything.
Most modern websites use these types of redirects to redirect to HTTPS versions of webpages.
Then, when someone visits the original URL, the browser loads the JavaScript file and executes the code it contains. If the script contains instructions to open a different URL, this is done automatically.
Performing redirects in this way is useful in a number of ways.
For example, you can switch URLs without manually updating every single URL on your site. In addition, JavaScript redirects can make it easier for search engines to find your own content.
A Quick Overview Of Redirect Types
There are several basic types of redirects, all of which are beneficial depending on your situation.
Server-side Redirects
Ideally, most redirects are server-side redirects.
These types of redirects come from the server and here the server decides where to redirect the user or search engine when a page loads. And the server does this by returning a 3xx HTTP status code.
For SEO reasons, you will probably use server-side redirects most of the time. Client-side redirects have some drawbacks and are usually appropriate for more specific situations.
Client-side Redirects
Client-side redirects are those where the browser decides where to redirect the user to. You shouldn’t need to use these unless you’re in a situation where you have no other option.
Meta Refresh Redirects
Meta refresh redirect has a bad rap and reputation in the SEO community.
And with good reason: they are not supported by all browsers and can be confusing for the user. Instead, Google recommends using a server-side 301 redirect instead of meta-refresh redirects.
JavaScript Redirects
However, JavaScript redirects use the JavaScript language to send instructions to the browser to redirect users to a different URL. There is a prevailing opinion that JavaScript redirects cause problems for SEO.
Although Google has good JavaScript rendering capabilities these days, JavaScript can still cause problems. This also applies to other types of platforms like Spotify and other ecommerce platforms.
However, if you are in a situation where you can only use a JavaScript redirect as your only choice, then you can use JavaScript only.
Google’s Gary Illyes also stated as recently as 2020 that JavaScript redirects are “probably not a good idea”.
However, js redirects are probably not a good idea.
— Gary 鯨理／경리 Illyes (@methode) July 8, 2020
Best Practices For SEO-Friendly JavaScript Redirects
Whether you’re using traditional redirects or JavaScript redirects, there are some best practices you need to follow to avoid messing things up for SEO.
These best practices include avoiding redirection chains and redirection loops.
Avoid Redirect Chains
A redirect chain is a long chain of redirect hops, referring to any situation where you have more than 1 redirect in a chain.
detour 1 > detour 2 > detour 3 > detour 4 > redirect 5
Why are these bad? Google can only handle up to three redirects, although they have been known to handle more.
Google’s John Mueller recommends fewer than 5 hops per redirect.
“It does not matter. The only thing I would look for is that you have less than 5 hops for URLs that are crawled frequently. With multiple hops, the main effect is that it’s a bit slower for users. Search engines simply follow the redirection chain (for Google: up to 5 hops in the chain per crawl attempt).”
Ideally, webmasters should aim for no more than one hop.
What happens if you add another hop? It slows down user experience. And more than five leads to significant confusion as to whether Googlebot can even understand your site.
Fixing redirect chains can take a lot of work depending on the complexity and setup.
But the main principle of repairing redirect chains is: just make sure you follow two steps.
First remove the extra hops in the forwarder so that it is less than five hops.
Second, implement a redirect that redirects the previous URLs
Avoid Redirect Loops
Redirect loops, by comparison, are essentially an endless loop of redirects. These loops occur when you redirect a URL to itself. Or you accidentally redirect a URL within a redirection chain to a URL earlier in the chain.
Example of a detour loop: detour 1 > detour 2 > detour 3 > redirect 2
This is why monitoring website redirects and URLs is so important: you don’t want a situation where you implement a redirect only to find out 3 months later that the redirect you created months ago was the cause of problems because it caused a redirection loop.
There are several reasons why these loops are disastrous:
Regarding users, redirect loops remove all access to a specific resource located on a URL and cause the browser to show the error “This page has too many redirects”.
For search engines, redirect loops can be a significant waste of your crawl budget. They also create confusion for bots.
This creates what is known as a crawler trap, and the crawler cannot easily get out of the trap unless manually directed elsewhere.
Fixing redirect loops is pretty easy: all you have to do is remove the redirect that is causing the chain to loop and replace it with a 200 OK working URL.
Want To Use JavaScript Redirects For SEO? Not So Fast…
Be careful when creating JavaScript redirects as they may not be the best redirect solution depending on what you have access to.
They should not be your first choice if you have access to other redirects as these other types of redirects are preferred.
But if they’re the only option, maybe don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
Featured Image: RoseRodionova/Shutterstock
What is device user agent?
User agent is a string of data from a user’s device that represents data points such as operating system, browser, carrier, and hardware.
What is the user agent on mobile? The User-Agent (UA) string is included in the HTTP headers and is intended to identify devices requesting online content. The user-agent tells the server what the visiting device is (among many other things), and this information can be used to determine what content to return.
What is a user agent used for?
A user agent is any software that retrieves and presents web content to end users or is implemented using web technologies. User agents include web browsers, media players, and plug-ins that help retrieve, render, and interact with web content.
What does user agent reveal?
The user-agent tells the server what the visiting device is (among many other things), and this information can be used to determine what content to return. Of course, this requires the use of a device discovery solution that translates UAs into understandable software and hardware information.
What is the use of user agent in HTTP request?
The User-Agent is a field in the HTTP request header. The request header is sent in the initial GET request, and the User Agent field is often used to determine the application’s capabilities or limitations. The format of the user-agent field is specified in RFC 2616 section 14.43.
What is an example of a user agent?
A user agent (UA for short) is software that communicates with servers in a network. An example would be a web browser that retrieves and displays a web page from a server on the internet. The user agent acts as an intermediary between the user and the web server, just like a human agent.
What is the purpose of user agent header?
The User-Agent-Request-Header is a distinctive string of characters that servers and network partners can use to identify the application, operating system, vendor, and/or version of the requesting user-agent.
What is my agent user?
I bet you’re thinking, “What’s my user agent?” It is an intermediary or middleman between you and the internet world. In simple terms, it is a string of text, unique to every software or browser on the internet, containing the technical information about your device and operating system.
What is IP user agent?
As an application, it is used with one of several TCP/IP network protocols – specifically, it is the one that connects you to the website you want to reach. “User-agent” refers to the application that accesses another computer, usually a server, remotely over the network.
How do I find my user agent in Chrome?
Google Chrome User Agent Switcher Chrome is part of the developer tools. Open it by clicking the menu button and selecting More tools > Developer tools. You can also use Ctrl-Shift-I on your keyboard.
What is an example of a user agent?
A user agent (UA for short) is software that communicates with servers in a network. An example would be a web browser that retrieves and displays a web page from a server on the internet. The user agent acts as an intermediary between the user and the web server, just like a human agent.
What is the most popular user agent?
List of the most common user agents
- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.36.
- Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0.
- Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/5.0; Trident/5.0)
How many user agents are there?
Search our database of 219.4 million user agents – WhatIsMyBrowser.com.
What are the 3 C’s of SEO?
Put simply, the basics of SEO boil down to the 3 Cs: content, code, and credibility.
Sources of 4 Essential SEO Steps?
Quels sont les leviers du SEO ?
To acquire traffic quality benefits, there are 4 SEO Miles that depend on Devrez actions: Internal email, IP obfuscation, Sémantique editing and Netlinking.
Quels sont les 3 grands axes à optimiser pour le SEO ?
Les 3 socles les plus efficiencies pour Optimizer the visibility of your web site and the gagner in position on the moteurs de recherches via a reference naturel sont: the technique, the sémantique (le content of pages) and the popularity of the site internet.
How Google treat JavaScript redirects?
JavaScript site redirects Use JavaScript redirects only if you cannot do server-side or meta update redirects. While Google tries to render every URL crawled by Googlebot, rendering can fail for a variety of reasons.
How does Google deal with 301? 301 redirects may not improve your webpages’ ranking, but they can ensure that both Google and search users are directed to the content they need to find. They also ensure that you don’t lose the ranking signals created for old URLs when you move them to new ones.
Is it legitimate practice to redirect users through JavaScript?
Although there can be legitimate reasons to redirect visitors and users to a different URL, a JavaScript redirect is commonly used as a sneaky method to fool search engines and drive user traffic to a site that is completely unrelated to a search .
How do I get user agent in Chrome console?
Google Chrome User Agent Switcher Chrome is part of the developer tools. Open it by clicking the menu button and selecting More tools > Developer tools. You can also use Ctrl-Shift-I on your keyboard.
What is user agent in JavaScript?
User-Agents is a JavaScript package for generating random user-agents based on how often they are used in the wild. A new version of the package is released automatically every day, so the data is always up-to-date.
How to check user agent in JavaScript?
To recognize user browser information, we use the navigator. userAgent property. And then we match the browser name to identify the user browser. Now call this JS function on page load and this will display the user browser name on page load.
How can I get browser user agent?
The navigator is used to access the browser’s user-agent string. userAgent property and then stored in a variable. The presence of a browser’s strings in this user-agent string is detected one by one. Chrome browser detection: Chrome browser user-agent is Chrome.
Are JavaScript redirects bad for SEO?
From an SEO point of view, a JavaScript redirect is not the most optimal type of redirect, since search engines have to render a page to find the redirect. Redirecting with a 301 redirect is always recommended (unless you want to temporarily redirect).
Do URL redirects hurt SEO?
Redirects aren’t bad for SEO, but like so many things, only if you use them properly. A bad implementation can cause all sorts of problems, from losing PageRank to losing traffic. Redirecting pages is a must when making changes to your URLs.
Are 302 redirects bad for SEO?
When used properly, a 302 redirect won’t hurt your SEO efforts. If you choose to redirect in this way, the original page will remain indexed in Google and no value (link equity) will be transferred to the new URL, as Google knows this is temporary.
Will 301 redirects hurt SEO?
This means that 301 redirects don’t hurt SEO performance or decrease the “PageRank” metrics associated with a page URL — although they’re not crucial to search ranking either. All 300-level server-side redirects pass PageRank to the target page (including 301 redirects, as well as 302 and 307 redirects).
How does Google treat 302 redirect?
Because they work just like regular redirects. It’s not that they don’t pass on PageRank or anything like that. And if you have long-term 302 redirects, we treat them the same as 301 redirects anyway.
Is it possible for Google to treat a 302 redirect as 301?
That makes sense because you’re communicating that the move is temporary. However, if the 302 redirect persists for a long time, search engines can start treating it as a 301 redirect – resulting in the authority and relevance of the URL being passed to the redirect destination.
Do browsers cache 302 redirects?
Even if you remove the redirect from the server, your browser will continuously redirect resources to the new domain or HTTPS due to the hard cache. So the 302 is not hard-cached by the browser and you have a chance to access the old version if you remove the redirect from your server (website).
How long does 302 redirect last?
Unlike 301 pages, 302 redirects are temporary, which means you can switch back at any time.
Is 302 redirect good for SEO?
When used properly, a 302 redirect won’t hurt your SEO efforts. If you choose to redirect in this way, the original page will remain indexed in Google and no value (link equity) will be transferred to the new URL, as Google knows this is temporary.
How do I find device details?
Navigate to the app > resolution > arrangement > activity_main. xml and add the following code to this file. Below is the code for the activity_main. xml file.
What are the device details? Device information is unique device identifiers such as IMEI number, contact lists (in some cases), technical data about your computer and mobile device, including application details and usage details.
What is my device name?
Open the Support app on your device. Scroll down to the device overview. The name and model number appear under Model.
How do I find my Android device name?
Check your phone’s settings The easiest way to check your phone’s model name and number is to use the phone itself. Go to the “Settings” or “Options” menu, scroll to the bottom of the list and turn on “About phone”, “About device” or similar. The device name and model number should be listed.
What is device name example?
An example of a device name is DESKTOP-3Q67JPL, which is a random sequence of letters and special characters. The computer name or device name is visible in many parts of the Windows operating system.
How do I find my mobile device details?
The easiest way to check your phone’s model name and number is to use the phone itself. Go to the “Settings” or “Options” menu, scroll to the bottom of the list and turn on “About phone”, “About device” or similar. The device name and model number should be listed.