Understanding and Managing Redirect Pages in WordPress: A Guide for Webmasters
Introduction
Navigating the complexities of website indexing can be challenging, especially when unexpected changes occur in your Google Search Console (GSC) reports. Recently, many site owners have observed a sudden surge in URLs labeled as “Page with redirect” after attempting to resolve indexing issues. This article aims to shed light on why this might happen and provide best practice solutions to manage such URLs effectively.
Scenario Overview
Imagine you operate a WordPress-based directory website. For several months, Google struggled to index your pages efficiently, resulting in slow indexing growth. To address this, you used the “Validate Fix” feature within Search Console to prompt re-crawling and reindexing efforts.
Unexpectedly, within a few days, your GSC account displays thousands of URLs categorized as “Page with redirect.” Typically, these URLs are consistent with patterns like:
/?c=CADpage/3/page/2/page/3/page/...
which are generated as part of WordPress’s pagination or parameter handling. Such URLs can create infinite loops, duplicate content issues, and adversely impact your site’s SEO performance.
Understanding the Issue
The root cause stems from how WordPress or associated plugins handle query parameters and pagination. Sometimes, these mechanisms produce URLs with parameters that search engines interpret as separate pages. If these URLs aren’t properly managed, Google may crawl and index a multitude of similar or infinite URLs, leading to increased crawl budget use and diluted page authority.
What Does “Page with Redirect” Mean?
Google flags pages with redirects as potentially problematic. Redirects could be intentional (e.g., forwarding older URLs) or indicative of duplicate or misconfigured pages. A sudden increase in such URLs following your validation step may suggest Google is re-evaluating your site’s structure or encountering redirect chains that need to be addressed.
Best Practices for Managing Infinite Pagination and URL Parameters
Effectively handling parameterized URLs is crucial for maintaining a clean, indexable website. Here are recommended approaches:
- Consolidate or Canonicalize Duplicate Content
Use canonical tags in your page headers to inform Google which version of a URL is the primary one. For pagination, canonicalization helps prevent indexing of multiple similar pages.
- Use Robots.txt for Parameter Management
Disallow or block crawling of specific URL parameters in your robots.txt file:
plaintext
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*?c=
This prevents search engines from crawling URLs with the `