Redirect and Rewrite - Who gets the SEO credit?

Redirect and Rewrite 301 302 Mobile

[Abhihome]

Hi,

I am building a Mobile version of my website and looking for some clarity on how do I set up my Redirect / Rewrite rules, to best preserve the SEO credit.

Here is what I am doing

1. http://www.example.com/product.html ->302-> -http://m.example.com/product.html
2. The content is actually on -http://m.example.com/mobile/product.html
So doing a Rewrite
RewriteRule /product.html /mobile/product.html [PT,L]

In this case, who keeps the SEO credit, it had acquired so far?
I wish to keep that with-http://www.example.com/product.html

Thanks
Abhilash

[lucy24]

Here is half of your answer:

Robots can do some things that human users normally can't. But even a robot-- not even Google-- knows when it has been rewritten. It only knows the visible URL. So any file or path that exists only as a behind-the-scenes rewrite is completely invisible to everyone including Google.

[g1smd]

Google indexes URLs, so they associate content with the URL they used to request it. They have no idea where inside the server this content lives, nor do they care.

They can spot identical and near identical copies and credit one URL as the original. Which one that is depends on many factors.

[phranque]

technically the http://www.example.com/product.html url should be indexed since the first redirect is considered a temporary redirect.
there have been cases where google decides it knows better than the webmaster and indexes the http://m.example.com/product.html url instead.
as g1smd indicated there are many factors at play here including how you respond to mobile vs non-mobile user agents, which urls you internally link to for mobile vs non-mobile versions of the site, what sitemaps you have submitted, if any, etc.

more about the mobile vs non-mobile distinction
How does Google treat mobile sitemaps that are almost identical to standard desktop ones? - Google Groups:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/sitemaps/_YrP2OIuM8k%5B1-25%5D

further complicating this is the question of which index a given url shows up in...

as far as "passing page rank" through a 302, which i assume is what you mean by "SEO credit", i think this communications from google as of 2 years ago indicates google is averse to passing page rank through a 302.
302 redirect for domain root - from Google's JohnMu:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4129328.htm [webmasterworld.com]