Restructuring Parts of Sites

Is 301 the right way for Google?

[Yidaki]

I know, changing a directory on a site isn't a big deal with google. They're pretty good in detecting and merging dup / redirect content under the same site / domain name. But it's still unclear to me what's the best way for restructuring TWO sites with different domains - what about moving content between them and still keeping its popularity / pr.

I have site A which is about Widgets in general widgets.com.
I also have site B which is about Widget Art widgets-art.com.

After the years i built a sub topic area at site A which covers Painting Widgets - to i'd like to include site B's Widget Colors part into site A's Painting Widgets category and remove it from site B. But since this area has some good back links, i'd like to keep it's natural pr / popularity. I know, i should request url changes from those who link to the area. But is that enough? What about redirecting widgets-art.com/widget-colors/ to widgets.com/painting/widget-colors/? Is this a risk with google? Erm, and what about Ink?

[Imaster]

Yidaki,

I did the same with two popular sites and merged them. Did a 301 redirect and everything worked well for me. I still haven't asked those sites which linked to both the sites, to change the urls to new ones because they are being counted as backlinks now and I got to a 7 PR for each sub-domain (2) + (Homepage) in a month.

I believe the concept that you mention is similar. The backlinks are counted just the same and PR would be same as well. Inktomi is bad, as in they still haven't crawled any pages from the new domain. They keep on crawling pages from the old domain and ignore 301 redirects.

I believe it would not be a risk to go with the setup you suggest. If I have missed something, please let me know.

[The Contractor]

Yidaki,

I did a simple restructuring of a directory:

Changed from site.com/oldname/subdirectories to site.com/newname/subdirectories via a 301 in htaccess.

The redirect worked very well, but Google took about 6 weeks to fully transfer PR and remove the old path/pages and include the new. I had simply renamed the directory so the old path/pages no longer existed - yet even with google crawling the new pages daily, it took awhile .... Ink is still showing some of the old..
Needless to say I will leave the redirect in htaccess for awhile.

Hope you have better luck :)