mikus - 2:35 am on Feb 12, 2010 (gmt 0)

jdMorgan - I use firefox http live headers too.

I too use .htaccess redirect. Here is what I used:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain.com$
RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ "http\:\/\/www\.newdomain\.com\/$1" [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^newdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [newdomain.com...] [L,R=301]

I checked with archive.com and shows no history whatsoever with the new domain.

My pages are all indexed still but it's the rankings stunk. I could find my pages fairly quickly after the 301 but it's where google placed them. They slowly moved around over 6 months but not released until after. I thought I covered my basis and can't think "WHY" it would react in this way. It's definately a google trust issue but why I can't for the life think of it. I really don't know much of how google handles the 301's because I never really wanted to do this in the past.

I can't call why this is the case. I could see why it could happen if a penalty site redirects to a new domain and tries to bypass the penalty but google logs redirects and I'm sure a penalty site will move the penalty to the new domain. This isn't the case.

Google is to harsh at times. They can turn lives upside down.