Practical example: 301 forwarding

An explicit redirect only forwards the source URL if it stands directly after the domain name and is the end of the URL: your-domain.com/fashion/men.

The circumflex ^ symbolises the start of the string and the dollar sign $ the end of the string. Use this syntax if you have multiple lines of redirects that have e.g. /fashion/trousers/ as the source URL and you want to avoid undesired redirects or endless redirects. In this case, the redirect looks like this: ^/fashion/trousers/$;/mode/men/trousers/;301;L

Would the following redirect also apply for /emotion-personality/connoisseur?

^/emotion-personality/connoisseur/*;/topics/food-drinks-enjoyment;301;L

The answer is no, it wouldn’t. If there is only one link that starts with /emotion-personality/connoisseur that should also work as a redirect, you can use a more general redirect:

^/emotion-personality/connoisseur*;/topics/food-drinks-enjoyment;301;L

The difference between both redirects is the trailing slash after connoisseur`that was left out in the second redirect. The trailing slash is an optional symbol, but if it’s missing every URL that begins with `/emotion-personality/connoisseur will be forwarded:

In our example, these URLs would forward to /topics/food-drinks-enjoyment;301;L.

If you put an asterisk behind the source and target URL: ^/emotion-personality/connoisseur*;/topics/food-drinks-enjoyment*;301;L

URL encoding within a redirect will cause problems, because a redirect uses semicolons as delimiter to separate source and target URL for example. The syntax of the redirect would be defective due to the semicolons of the URL encoding. Additionally, the redirects do not recognize parameter within the URL.