htaccess penalty

[djtaverner]

Hello,

This is a re-post of a previously unanswered question:

A page on my site is generating an 500 error I cant seem to remove. I have set up .htaccess to redirect this page to another page within my own domain.

Is this at risk of a redirect penalty?

or

Is it only redirects from multiple domains to one domain that causes an error?

[Brett_Tabke]

Yes, fix the issue first...

[djtaverner]

I was also hoping to use redirects from sub pages that have been deleted (but have incoming links & therefore traffic) back to the homepage.

Would this draw a penalty?

[Brett_Tabke]

offer a 404 first in that case to Googlebot. Otherwise a dupe content problem might arise.

[Robert Charlton]

offer a 404 first in that case to Googlebot.

Brett - How long would you keep the 404 up before applying the redirect?

[Powdork]

offer a 404 first in that case to Googlebot.

Are you suggesting cloaking?;)

Why not set up real pages to take advantage of the traffic, tell them what has happened to the old content, offer a link to the homepage, and run adsense on the pages.