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I need to permanently redirect all visitors to an specific domain except search bots (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.), How should I do it using htaccess?

anubhava
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John Smith
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  • Search for http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=[.htaccess]+bot or http://stackoverflow.com/search?q=[mod-rewrite]+bot and you will find some answers, e.g. http://stackoverflow.com/q/18076099/1741542, http://stackoverflow.com/q/12904684/1741542 – Olaf Dietsche Nov 23 '14 at 10:51
  • @OlafDietsche: I found this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12904684/htaccess-301-redirection-for-the-bots ... but I don't know how to edit rules to match my case. I think that is vice versa. – John Smith Nov 23 '14 at 10:55

2 Answers2

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You can reverse the rules using negation in RewriteCond like this:

RewriteEngine On 

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} !^(110\.174\.129\.147|203\.217\.17\.162)
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !(Googlebot|msnbot|Surp) [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://newdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301,NE]
anubhava
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  • Thanks, Can you please tell me how to do it with IP addresses? I mean I need to allow some websites just like the search bots and don't redirect them. How can I allow IP or Domain? – John Smith Nov 23 '14 at 11:44
  • Thank you very much. Just another question. Can I join the first part of conditions with OR ? I mean something like this: %{HTTP_CLIENT_IP|REMOTE_ADDR|...} – John Smith Nov 23 '14 at 11:54
  • No that cannot be done, better be separate conditions. – anubhava Nov 23 '14 at 12:05
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To allow all bots, you can implement a do nothing rule, e.g. 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (bot|spider) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ - [L]

This rule triggers for all visitors, which have either bot or spider in their user agent string. You can be more specific of course, if you want only a few bots like Google, Yahoo and Bing. When the condition is met, nothing else happens.

To redirect everybody else to another domain, just append a simple redirect rule 

RewriteRule ^ http://www.example.com [R,L]

When everything works as you expect, you can change R to R=301. Never test with 301 enabled, see this answer Tips for debugging .htaccess rewrite rules for details.

Community
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Olaf Dietsche
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