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1. NoMeatAthlete
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   I use category names in my urls, and the format is as follows:

   http://www.nomeatathlete.com/category/title

   I decided to change my category names, and I've been setting up 301 redirects so as to avoid having duplicate content hurt my search engine rank.

   In the process, however, I discovered that when I type anything at all into the "category" slot in the url, the pages still load just fine. The category slot doesn't matter at all! Can anyone tell me what is going on?

   This doesn't really cause me any problems, but I try to make my blog as visible to search engines as possible and I'm worried that this might a symptom of some big issue.

2. esmi
   Theme Diva & Forum Moderator
   Posted 2 years ago #

   I've been setting up 301 redirects so as to avoid having duplicate content hurt my search engine rank.

   Why?

   http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html

3. NoMeatAthlete
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Wow, that's terrific news. That will save me a ton of headache, thanks!

   I'm still curious about why I can type a bunch of nonsense into the url for the category name and still load the pages though...

4. esmi
   Theme Diva & Forum Moderator
   Posted 2 years ago #

   I can't. http://www.nomeatathlete.com/wibble/miscellaneous/ gives me a 404.

5. NoMeatAthlete
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   It gives a 404 because there's no post called "miscellaneous."

   Example of what I mean:

   http://www.nomeatathlete.com/vegetarian-recipes/corn-cakes is a correct url.

   http://www.nomeatathlete.com/wibble/corn-cakes loads the same page on my computer, even without redirecting to a new url.

   It's as if the category name in the url is only aesthetic.

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