Question

I have a url like domain.com/category/
Somehow, Google has picked up domain.com/category/category/ which ends up somewhere else.
the “category” for the rule I would like to create will always be the same, so what I would like to do is find our if this matches and then strip either one.
The url will then go to the right place.

i.e. domain.com/category/category/ should end up like domain.com/category/ if /category/ matches the second /category/

Is this possible with a simple condition?

Answer 1

Yes, possible with simple condition using the \1 backreference:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/([^/]+)/\1/
RewriteRule ^/?([^/]+)/([^/]+)/(.*)$ /$1/$3 [L,R=301]

Or you can just do it all in the rule:

RewriteRule ^/?([^/]+)/\1/(.*)$ /$1/$2 [L,R=301]