URL Redirection

URL redirection, also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that already has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened. For example, www.example.com is redirected to example.iana.org. Similarly, Domain redirection or domain forwarding is when all pages in a URL domain are redirected to a different domain, as when wikipedia.com and wikipedia.net are automatically redirected to wikipedia.org. URL redirection can be used for URL shortening, to prevent broken links when web pages are moved, to allow multiple domain names belonging to the same owner to refer to a single web site, to guide navigation into and out of a website, for privacy protection, and for less innocuous purposes such as phishing attacks.

A user might mis-type a URL—for example, "example.com" and "exmaple.com". Organizations often register these "mis-spelled" domains and re-direct them to the "correct" location: example.com. The addresses example.com and example.net could both redirect to a single domain, or web page, such as example.org. This technique is often used to "reserve" other top-level domains (TLD) with the same name, or make it easier for a true ".edu" or ".net" to redirect to a more recognizable ".com" domain.

Web pages may be redirected to a new domain for three reasons:


With URL redirects, incoming links to an outdated URL can be sent to the correct location. 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.

The same applies to search engines. They often have the older/outdated domain names and links in their database and will send search users to these old URLs. By using a "moved permanently" redirect to the new URL, visitors will still end up at the correct page. Also, in the next search engine pass, the search engine should detect and use the newer URL.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. Source: Wikipedia