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up vote 2 down vote favorite

Lets take this site, the path is

/questions/Question-ID/title

If a user writes the below it still works. On my site I was wondering if i should redirect the to the new url or let it be? what error code should i use? 302? 303?

/questions/Question-ID
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I think it's a better fit in webmasters.stackexchange.com – Lipis Oct 22 '10 at 11:23

migrated from webapps.stackexchange.com Oct 22 '10 at 11:44

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

If you redirect use a 301 as you want the redirect to be permanent.

As far as should you redirect? I don't think it's necessary. Just use canonical URLs so the search engines know which URL is the primary URL. I recommend having it be the one with the keywords in it.

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According to that link it looks like the page should have the canonical url be /questions/Question-ID and it should redirect to /questions/Question-ID/title. Is this what i should do? – acidzombie24 Oct 22 '10 at 13:55
1  
@acidzombie24: No, you either use canonicalL or you redirect (to the canonical URL), not both. Google prefers that you use a 301 redirect. – Lèse majesté Oct 22 '10 at 13:58
up vote 0 down vote

It's a good habit to provide an unique URL for every resource in your site. So the answer is yes, it's a good idea to redirect the user if it enters an incomplete URL.

In your case, the redirect should set a 301 HTTP Status code because you are permanently redirecting 

/questions/Question-ID

to

/questions/Question-ID

This change will also reduce page duplication and help search engines to consolidate your ranking.

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