Processing redirects

  1. What redirects are recognized by the Yandex robot?
  2. What's the difference between in-host redirection and host-to-host redirection?
  3. How does Yandex process in-house redirects?
  4. How does Yandex process redirects for regional and language versions of sites?

What redirects are recognized by the Yandex robot?

The Yandex robot recognizes standard HTTP 3xx status codes (redirection).

The main types of redirects:

  • 301 — Permanent redirect.

  • 302/303/307 — Temporary redirect.

  • A redirection that uses the refresh meta tag with small delays is considered a temporary redirect.

What's the difference between in-host redirection and host-to-host redirection?

In-host redirection is a redirection within the same host (FQDN). Host-to-host redirection is redirection to a page residing on a different host.

Example of an in-host redirect:

a.ru/ -> a.ru/index.html
www.a.ru/index1.html -> www.a.ru/index2.html

Example of an inter-host redirect:

a.ru/index1.html -> www.a.ru/index2.html
a.ru/index1.html -> b.ru/index2.html

How does Yandex process in-house redirects?

If one page (source) has a redirect to another page (target) within the same host, the robot will index the content of the target, and the search results will display the link to the target.

The main page of the host is always displayed in the search results.

a.ru/ -> a.ru/innerpage
a.ru/innerpage -> a.ru/

How does Yandex process redirects for regional and language versions of sites?

If regional or language versions are implemented as subdomains and a redirect is configured for redirecting visitors, the subdomains are combined into a group of mirrors. When the robot visits the site, like the visitor, it can be redirected to one of the subdomains. Then it indexes the target page of the redirect. Thus, the site can be displayed differently in the search:

Displaying the home and internal pages

If the redirect is configured for internal pages, the search results display the redirect target page with its content. If the redirect is configured for the site home page, the search results show the home page with the content of the target page.

For example, the search displays the home page https://example.com. If the robot is redirected to the page https://example.com/en, the home page is displayed with the English content. If it is redirected to https://example.com/ru, the home page is displayed with the Russian content.

Selecting the page version to display

If the site uses a redirect based on the user's IP address, the robot's IP address may differ from the region's IP address. Therefore, any of the page versions can be displayed in the search results. As a result, the page content may not match what you'd like the user to see.

To display the correct content in the search:
  1. Identify a robot that crawls your site, for example, by the User-agent line.
  2. Check what content the robot retrieves.
  3. Choose one of the options:
    • Configure the redirect so that the Yandex robot retrieves the same content.
    • Instead of a redirect, use the language or region toggle on the site. To do this, configure the server so that both versions respond with the HTTP code 200 OK. If the sites are already combined into a group of mirrors, configure the server the same way, and the sites will be separated in some time. To speed up this process, submit a request to separate sites.

When you change a site's URL or main mirror, it usually takes about a month for changes to appear in the search results. If you followed the instructions when moving or separating sites, but the changes didn't appear in the search results, contact support.

Tell us what your question is about so we can direct you to the right specialist:

The main mirror changed by mistake
The site is presented in the search results with the wrong URL
Site domain name changed
HTTP / HTTPS changed
The "www" prefix is added or removed
The moving request isn't accepted
Sites are not separated for a long time

The main mirror of the site may change if a redirect or the rel="canonical" attribute pointing to the site that became the main mirror is set on the old site pages. To avoid automatic selection the main mirror in the future, make sure that all non-main mirror pages redirect to the corresponding pages of the desired main mirror.

This means that the robot selected the main site mirror automatically. Specify the correct site URL for the robot, following the recommendations in the Moving a site section.

Main reasons why the sites aren't grouped:

  • In the source code of the site that should become the main mirror contains the rel="canonical" attribute. Delete it and submit the request for moving again.
  • The site is unavailable or responds with a long delay.
  • The sites' content doesn't match. Check if the internal page URLs and headers match.
  • The site is moving to another domain zone without a redirect.
  • Site indexing is prohibited in the robots.txt file.
  • Violations of the Search rules are detected on the site. View the details on the Security and violations page in Yandex.Webmaster and fix the errors. After 2 weeks, check that the message about the violation disappears from Yandex.Webmaster, and re-send the request.
  • The request was sent from the site to move to.
  • Internal service error. Try sending the request later.