301 Redirection and Page Quality

[zims]

Hi,

if i have one page which have no back links and google shows it as supplemental page. if i am redirecting this page to same website's homepage then whats will be effect (Specially in Google)?

Ranking dropped in Google? or get penalty? or anything?

[tangor]

Why redirect it if it is a found page? Ultimately the proposed redirect will make the page disappear in serps (to the homepage). Exercise in futility.

[zims]

Thanks for reply, i do not need these pages so i want to redirect it.

is there any effect or not?

[jdMorgan]

If you 301-redirect a URL, it will disappear from the search results, and any 'ranking power' of the old URL will eventually be assigned to the new URL.

However, since you say this page has no backlinks, then it probably has no 'ranking power' to pass to the new URL. Therefore, it makes no difference to the search engines whether you redirect this URL or delete the file that corresponds to it and return a 410-Gone or 404-Not Found response when it is requested.

You can therefore base your decision entirely on 'user experience' factors. This would tend to favor the 410-Gone response, assuming that your custom 410 error page does a good job of explaining the error to your visitors and guiding them to find the resources they need.

Jim

[edited by: jdMorgan at 6:27 pm (utc) on June 9, 2009]