SEO and 301 redirects. Can they have relative paths or should they be absolute?

Question

SEO and 301 redirects. Can they have relative paths or should they be absolute?

With a 301 redirect for a page, BOTs / Spiders will process a 301 that goes to the relative path (redirect = "../") just like the one that goes to the absolute path (redirect = "http: //www.somewebsite. com / apage / ").

For example, I have a parent page with content ( http://www.somewebsite.com/apage/ ). I have a subpage ( http://www.somewebsite.com/apage/more-details ) with additional content on it.

I plan to transfer additional content to the main page and get rid of ( http://www.somewebsite.com/apage/more-details ), but I want to use 301 to redirect bots / browsers to the page level up ( http: // www.somewebsite.com/apage/ ), so I do not lose a single page rank, etc.

Answer 1

Per Standard , RFC 2616, "The value of the [Location] field consists of a single absolute URI." Using a relative URI in any "Location:" header (301 or otherwise) violates the standard and puts you at the mercy of strangers - authors of browsers, spiders, etc. It's much easier, safer, and more reliable to follow the standard — always use absolute URIs in the headers of your location!