How does GoogleBot treat 301 redirect?

[irock]

I have a DMOZ listing which points to an already retired directory. But numerous attempts to get my DMOZ editor to change the URL have failed. So, today, I put a 301 permanent redirect to redirect traffic into my homepage. I was just wondering how GoogleBot will treat this 301 redirect.

Thanks!

[Yidaki]

After a couple of updates (1-2, guessing) your new url should replace the old one in the google results. All pr should get transferred to the new page. Did you email other webmasters who link to the old url? They should change their links to point towards your new page.

[irock]

Thanks for the reply, but the problem is that the most important page with a link to this retired page is on DMOZ. The link is also sitting in a category that is often left unattended.

Anyone else has experience with 301 transferring PR value to the new page?

Thanks!

[EBear]

Yidaki

I'm wondering the same thing.

>Did you email other webmasters who link to the old url? They should change their links to point towards your new page.

Why?

If the PR is transferred to the new page then why does the link need to be changed as well?

I'm trying to clean up a large, mature site with many instances of \widgets.html and \widgets\index.html (and sometimes \widgets.shtml). Some of these are duplicate conmtent, more often the problem is that they are different iterations of the site's design. ALL versions are indexed in Google, and ALL have some inbound links. I'd like to use 301 Redirects to pool the value (and PR) of each URL into a single, current page, without having to update links. My understanding is that

Redirect 301 /widgets.html [mydomain.com...]
and
Redirect Permanent /widgets.html [mydomain.com...]

will both do this and are the same thing. Can anyone confirm this?

Hmm. Could I just use
Redirect 301 /widgets.html /widgets/index.html

I found this thread while searching for answers, so if I find them elsewhere I'll come back and post them here.

[MattJ]

I had a site that was in the index for around 8 months, then created a new domain which has been indexed for about 2. I 301'd www.oldsite.com to www.newsite.com and got all of the PR within a couple of weeks (The PR is 5 to 6 across the site). It seemed that I got every last drop of PR from the old site which is nice.

www.oldsite.com is still in some of the rankings when I do a search, but I'm sure that will be fixed soon. I don't really care that much although it does look a bit funny to customers (e.g. www.cars.com and the title and description in the results is about boats, the new site's description).

[DavidT]

Just noticing today that googlebot, both fresh and deep, will not follow 301 redirects on PR0 sites at least. Slurp is eating them up no problem, Googlebot getting nothing for its efforts.

[Robert Charlton]

With a 301, Google figures out the situation pretty quickly. Inktomi takes a little longer, but they manage. Some of the other engines... specifically AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and Teoma... seem to be thrown by the old DMOZ listing, or else they're very, very slow, or both.

[europeforvisitors]

Anyone else has experience with 301 transferring PR value to the new page?

A number of months ago, the owner of a cruise site linked to an article on my site via a redirect link. In other words, when users clicked on the "Sitename" link on the cruise site's PR6 home page, they were taken to a page called r2.htm or something similar on the cruise site, and that page redirected them to my article. (I assume this was done so the Webmaster could track clickthroughs in her daily traffic reports.)

In the next Google update, my article ranked #1 for its most important keyphrase (the name of a cruise ship), and the SERP correctly displayed the name of my page and a snippet from its content. However, the URL was the URL of the cruise site's redirect page.

Later, after another month or so, my own URL replaced the redirect page's URL in the Google listing. (That's all that changed: the page was still #1 for its keyphrase.)

Based on my experience, I'd predict that:

1) The redirect won't hurt you in Google; and...

2) Google will show the old URL for a while, but in a month or two the new URL will take its place.

[swerve]

<OFFTOPIC>
When viewing this thread, my Google toolbar shows a white bar, whereas most threads show estimated or real PR5. A quick check shows that this thread is already in Google, with Title and snippets, no fresh date, and no cache link. I've never noticed this before....just normal freshbot behavior?
</OFFTOPIC>

[jdMorgan]

EBear,

Redirect 301 /widgets.html [mydomain.com...]
and
Redirect Permanent /widgets.html [mydomain.com...]

will both do this and are the same thing. Can anyone confirm this?

Yes.

Hmm. Could I just use
Redirect 301 /widgets.html /widgets/index.html

No, that is invalid syntax. A full URL is required for the destination: Apache mod_alias documentation [httpd.apache.org]

HTH,
Jim

[EBear]

Thanks Jim. That is as I had thought.

[FleaPit]

I have a 301 question which I need confirmation on before I mess up my site :) If you 301 on the main url e.g. widgets.com, will this redirect all sub directorys and pages e.g. widgets.com/redwidgets.html, to the new url or do you have to 301 each page? This means internal pages that rank well in the serps would end up on the wrong landing page if they all go to the new url homepage. Any solution other than 301 each page or wait for the new url internal pages to be fully indexed?

Hmmmm, hope that makes sense!