I often do searches on search engines for topics on Wine Berserkers. Since the switch to the new platform, many of these results seem to be returning the message “ Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private.”
Is it possible that some or many of the URLs from the old software didn’t get properly forwarded to their new URL?
Note 1: I know that the new search function is much improved. But I and many others have discovered WB through search engines.
Note 2: I use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. (I know. I’m a weirdo.) In a brief test, Google doesn’t seem to be returning these broken links.
when you reach the broken page, copy/paste the URL here.
I just did a quick test on DuckDuckGo and didn’t hit that problem - even when I logged out to try to make it possible for it to be a permissions/private page…
indexing issue on the part of the search engine - should naturally sort out in time.
BUT, with the search working here, why would you do this? prior to a working search, a google index would likely be better, but certainly not now.
hmm that URL might be for a single specific post. most of the results I see have f=1&t=127583 … i.e. specifying a thread, which would have a redirect. maybe you got unlucky with the exact result you clicked on?
As I mentioned in my original post, I’m aware that the search feature is much improved. I’ve enjoyed using it.
I wanted to bring this to Todd’s attention because it was my understanding that old URLs would be redirected to the corresponding new URL. That doesn’t seem to be happening. Incorrectly forwarding URLs when they change can make it harder for new people to discover WB through search engines, and can result in a loss of “reputation” which can result in WB pages ranking lower in search engine results. So if redirection is broken, I assume that Todd would want to fix it. (Of course, I could be wrong.)
Old URLs are indeed given redirects, but it’s up to the search engine to index those - if DuckDuckGo’s crawlers haven’t crawled the whole site yet, those redirects won’t happen. With Google (who has turbo crawlers, obviously) the redirects are all intact, as far as I know. Unfortunately this is up to the search engine. They likely have cached old threads from prior crawls, etc.
As has been mentioned many times, the search function here allows for great specificity, no need to use search engine site searches anymore 
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It’s certainly possible. But I’ve run into that “doesn’t exist” message pretty often. This is just the first time I’ve bothered to report it. 
Edit: Todd weighed in above. Apparently, all is well. 
I searched for champagne via DuckDuckGo and the first 5 results or so all worked. I think it’s a thread vs post issue as I alluded to, I just don’t know why Charles would be hitting so many results using the other type of url (which probably isn’t redirected at all)
BTW, @Ju1ian_Dev1in is correct - only thread URLs have redirect, not individual posts WITHIN a thread - with this huge database that would take forever to do.
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