kellyman - 3:33 pm on Sep 6, 2012 (gmt 0)

There should be no difference in a 301 redirect returned by PHP or by htaccess. A redirect is a redirect. Things go wrong when a request results in an unwanted multiple step redriection chain. You should test a selection of canonical and non-canonical requests and look in detail at the Live HTTP Headers extension for Firefox for the results. Redirecting old site page X to new site page Y should NOT pass through old site page Y or through new site page X on the way.

Hi g1smd

Thats exactly what we did, the current 301 passes every single test, response headers are perfect too, everything looks textbook, maybe when i look mat the response codes i am missing something, but i get a 301 where they should be and a 200 for the correct page,

you mention in a reply you kindly gave me a few months back that when you helped me out on another question that when your requesting upper to lower case its one of the only occasions where the 301 is done after the rules as this would result in a multiple step redirection chain

However because of the way my guy has called the PHP redirects I am convinced they are chaining somewhere, as as his code is secret squirrel i never get to see if there is a mistake hence I am taking the approach of asking for a Htaccess to be implemented as 14 weeks for a simple name change is way too long, PR returned to inner pages home page nothing, i dont even show if you copy a line of text from the home page and put it into the search, it just seems the home page is very very weak

So deep down i know there is something not right, i never expect rankings back over night, but they are not even close to moving

So i was hoping from what i posted If i were to change the PHP to hataccess i have it exactly right then i can dismiss the fear i have that something in my web guys application is causing a redirect chain,

if what i opposed to do in the first post is best practice, as i really need to get this right now

Thanks again in adavnce