Is this a good use for the redirect tag?

Question

How does Google view the redirect tag, e.g:

   {if segment_4 == ""}
        {exp:channel:entries limit="1" entry_id="{segment_3}" disable="categories|category_fields|custom_fields|member_data|pagination"}
            {redirect='forum/answers/{entry_id}/{url_title}'}
        {/exp:channel:entries}
   {/if}

For example I could redirect: site.com/forum/answers/123 to site.com/forum/answers/123/what-is-a-dog and have link rel="canonical" href="{path='{segment_1}/{segment_2}/{segment_3}/{segment_4}'}" on the template.

What will Google make of site.com/forum/answers/123, or will it never see it?

Perplexing...

Thanks.

Answer 1

What will Google make of site.com/forum/answers/123

It will see that as a 302 (temporary) redirect, as that's what EE sends with the {redirect=""} tag (which calls the redirect method of the functions class).

... or will [Google] never see it?

That all depends on where the links to your entries are coming from. If you want your links to appear a certain way, then make sure that the rest of your site links to these entries in that way (i.e., template_group/template/entry_id/url_title), and hence, Google will not have to be redirected (nor will anyone else).

But if you for some reason do not have control over the links which point to these entries, then yes, Google (and everyone else) will trigger that redirect, and the rel="canonical" meta tag should tell Google to remember the correct link (even though it was given a 302 [temporary] rather than 301 [permanent] redirect).