: Search Engine Query Word Order I've pages with titles like 'Alpha to Beta'. For every such page, there is an inverse page 'Beta to Alpha'. Both pages link to each other. When someone on Google

@Ravi8258870

I'd advise against redirecting users based on perceived intent: you stand a good chance of alienating your visitors if you make incorrect assumptions, it's complex and prone to error (you want to redirect users, not bots, so probably need to start checking user-agent, etc.).

Besides, it doesn't address the real problem, which almost certainly is the content.

If the two pages are "very different", but appear almost interchangeable to a search engine, the content isn't sufficiently specific and differentiated. I'd recommend taking some time to rewrite the content and, in particular, the page title and headings.

Think also about site architecture. Is there a way you can organise your information that underlines the differences between them?

With all of this, make incremental changes and monitor analytics to see whether you're on the right track. Perhaps consider A/B or multivariate testing - look at Google Experiments (requires Google Analytics) for example.

The bottom line is, this is almost certainly not a problem with a technical fix: it's about getting your content right.

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@Cooney921

See About rel=canonical:


A canonical page is the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content.


Point from what you call "inverse page" to the what you call "correct" page via the canonical link.

At least for Google this should solve your problem.

To the redirect question: As long as you treat searchengine and human visitor all the same there is no problem. Only if you, in simple terms, differentiate.

In case the content on these two pages is not the same and can be assumed to be unique or have value in itself (Alpha with Beta means something very different from Beta with Alpha) then leave the navigation to the user and have a link saying something like


You are on Alpha with Beta, here is Beta with Alpha.

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