Redirects have been used to manipulate search engines with unethical intentions, e.g., URL hijacking. Usually server-side redirects are used for Geotargeting but client-side redirects might be an option as well, depending on requirements. This is helpful for websites that target audience in more than one location and/or language. Geotargeting is the approach to offer localized content and automatically forward the user to a localized version of the requested URL. For device targeting, client-side redirects or non-cacheable server-side redirects are used. If a mobile website version is offered, users with mobile clients will be automatically forwarded to the corresponding mobile content. There are two approaches to serve mobile users: Make the website responsive or redirect to a mobile website version. Device targeting has become increasingly important with the rise of mobile clients. Redirects can be effectively used for targeting purposes like geotargeting. Post/Redirect/Get (PRG) is a web development design pattern that prevents some duplicate form submissions if the user clicks the refresh button after submitting the form, creating a more intuitive interface for user agents (users).ĭevice targeting and geotargeting In such scenarios, displaying the warning causes an additional delay. The same technique is also used by some corporate websites to implement a statement that the subsequent content is at another site, and therefore not necessarily affiliated with the corporation. As this added request will leave a trace in the server log, revealing exactly which link was followed, it can also be a privacy issue. This technique bears the downside of the delay caused by the additional request to the original website's server. Instead of sending the visitor straight to the other site, links on the site can direct to a URL on the original website's domain that automatically redirects to the real target. This information can be captured in several ways. This is because the visitor's browser has no need to communicate with the original server when the visitor clicks on an outgoing link. They do not, however, log which links visitors left by. The access logs of most web servers keep detailed information about where visitors came from and how they browsed the hosted site. Also, in the next search engine pass, the search engine should detect and use the newer URL. By using a 'moved permanently' redirect to the new URL, visitors will still end up at the correct page. They often have the older/outdated domain names and links in their database and will send search users to these old URLs. These links might be from other sites that have not realized that there is a change or from bookmarks/favorites that users have saved in their browsers. With URL redirects, incoming links to an outdated URL can be sent to the correct location.

an author might move their individual pages to a new domain.

a site might desire, or need, to change its domain name.Web pages may be redirected to a new domain for three reasons: This technique is often used to 'reserve' other top-level domains (TLD) with the same name, or make it easier for a '.edu' or '.net' site to accommodate users who type '.com'.

Organizations often register these 'misspelled' domains and redirect them to the 'correct' location. A website operator may decide to serve such requests by redirecting the browser to the HTTPS variant instead and hopefully also priming HSTS for future accesses.Ī user might mistype a URL. Otherwise the website will be contacted over HTTP. There are several reasons to use URL redirection:Ī website may potentially be accessible over both a secure HTTPS URI scheme and plain HTTP (an insecure URI beginning with ' If a user types in a URI or clicks on a link that refers to the insecure variant, the browser will automatically redirect to the secure version in case the website is contained in the HSTS preload list shipped with the application or if the user had already visited the origin in the past. for hostile purposes such as phishing attacks or malware distribution.to guide navigation into and out of a website.to allow multiple domain names belonging to the same owner to refer to a single web site.to prevent broken links when web pages are moved.URL redirection is done for various reasons: Similarly, domain redirection or domain forwarding is when all pages in a URL domain are redirected to a different domain, as when and are automatically redirected to. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened. URL redirection, also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. For URL redirection on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Redirect.

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