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Please read: Matt Cutts: "Adding a 301 redirect can be an especially good idea if your site changes"

If I'm johnny my URL might be 134564/johnny and if I change my username to paul, and people have outside links to my profile at 134564/johnny, they'll still work. This means more than one URL to a page. Issue a 301 if the name doesn't match (doesn't waste more DB, as you need the username in the profile anyway).

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    The link still works. What's the problem?
    – random
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 7:32
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    Maybe we should just have '/users/134564' and call it a day.
    – o.k.w
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 10:56
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    see random's answer -- this isn't necessary because we have a canonical link tag
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 21:10
  • Wow good thing you guys closed this one because it was a really offensive question to ask. I didn't mean to offend anyones's intelligence I promise. I really like all of you guys a lot.
    – orokusaki
    Commented Jan 25, 2010 at 5:51

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You should read some of Matt Cutts' later stuff. Like the one posted in 2009 about the canonical tag:

An ugly url such as http://www.example.com/page.html?sid=asdf314159265 can specify in the HEAD part of the document the following:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/page.html"/>

That tells search engines that the preferred location of this url (the “canonical” location, in search engine speak) is http://example.com/page.html instead of http://www.example.com/page.html?sid=asdf314159265 .

And it's already implemented in the trilogy of sites.

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    You were supposed to only read mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization Why don't you get that? +1, and more if I could.
    – balpha StaffMod
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 13:59
  • Canonical tags are meant for use with content that has multiple urls, not for broken systems that leave old urls around. I know it's tough to understand.
    – orokusaki
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 16:48
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    @orokusaki: no one who has replied here is a site maintainer or anything but what you are: a user. So your comments seem somewhat misplaced, not to mention offensive.
    – Ether
    Commented Jan 23, 2010 at 18:08
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    @orokusaki: 134564/johnny and 134564/paul are multiple urls for the same content, exactly what the rel="canonical" tag is designed to handle
    – Kip
    Commented Jan 25, 2010 at 14:01
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What's the benefit of issuing a redirect (causing an extra request) instead of just serving the right content?

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So should we also be redirecting the URL on questions if the title in the URL is incorrect?

meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/36723/we-love-ponies-we-love-ponies-we-love-ponies

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