How to 301 Re direct - Advantages Disadvantages

301 re direct - How to

[Shaundm]

I have 2 sites www.example.co.uk and www.example.com, I want all of the traffic from the .co.uk to go to the .com site. From reading many of the various pages on 301 re direct, this seems the way to go forward, as it consolidates PR (?).

Can anyone explain the basics of how to set up a 301 redirect, in simple terms. Also there seems to be many advantages, but not many disadvantages. Therfore what are the pros and cons.

I can't seem to find one message that has all this information on so hopefully this can be it and I'm sure its a common question, or guys and girls can you point me in the right direction to a previous message.
Thanks
Shaun

[ytswy]

This is a hugely debated subject, with little in the way of certainty (that I know of). You're probably best off having a good dig through the WebmasterWorld archives - a handy tip, go to Control Panel > System Preferences and paste the following html into the Custom Code Insert Top box:

<center><form method="GET" action="http://www.google.com/search"><input type="hidden" name="domains" value="webmasterworld.com"><input TYPE="text" name="q" size="25" maxlength="255" value><input type="submit" name="btnG" value="Google"><input type="radio" name="sitesearch" value="webmasterworld.com" checked>webmasterworld.com <input type="radio" name="sitesearch" value>www</form></center>

This should give you a nice Google site search box on WebmasterWorld, type 301 into it and start reading :)

[Shaundm]

Thanks the code, it has worked a treat, however I still can't find in simple mans terms how to set up a permanent redirect.
All I basically want to do is anyone who logs onto www.example.co.uk gets forwarded to www.example.com.
Am I missing something...

[Digerati]

Hi Shaundm,

This very possibly does not have to do with your original question, but I'm curious to know why you want to redirect users from the .co.uk site to the .com site. There are a lot of reasons why you may want that - from not wanting to incur the duplicate content penalty to simply having a consolidated destination while protecting brand name URLs. I was just curious to know what yours was. I bring this up because, if you're doing this to stay away from the dupe penalty, I remember Matt Cutts from Google saying that country specific domain names are not subject to this penalty in spite of dupe content.

Just my 2 cents :)

[Shaundm]

Its because I want everything sent to the .com URL as it rolls off the tongue better and is worldwide (ie outside UK), and consolidate the 2 URL's. I brought .co.uk just to stop someone else using it and want anyone who mistakenly types .co.uk to be redirected.
Thanks