PHPSESSID in your URL? Learn to 301 redirect them with PHP
I’m doing some work on a site which has like 4,500 pages indexed with a PHPSESSID in the URL, causing some major duplicate content problems. I got the server admin to disable the PHPSESSID’s by adding the following to the vhost config:
[code]php_value session.use_trans_sid 0
php_value session.use_only_cookies 1[/code]
I also wanted Google to get a clean URL when it decided to spider one of the old URL’s again, and didn’t have access to mod_rewrite, so I redirected them with some PHP. The solution is quite simple:
[code]if (isset($_GET[‘PHPSESSID’])) {
$requesturi = preg_replace(‘/?PHPSESSID=[^&]+/’,””,$_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’]);
$requesturi = preg_replace(‘/&PHPSESSID=[^&]+/’,””,$requesturi);
header(“HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
header(“Location: http://”.$_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’].$requesturi);
exit;
}[/code]
The SEO Update by Yoast - March 2026 Edition
Expert analysis of the latest SEO & AI news developments with Carolyn Shelby and Alex Moss. Join our upcoming update! 📺
All Yoast SEO WebinarsBaltic-Nordic SEO Summit
Team Yoast is Attending, Sponsoring, Yoast Booth at Baltic-Nordic SEO Summit! Click through to see who will be there, what we will do, and more!
See where you can find us nextSorry! We don’t have a podcast planned at the moment.
Keep an eye on our site and social media to stay up-to-date.
All Yoast SEO Podcasts
Discussion (19)