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Redirect 301 /page1.html [my_domain.com...]
Redirect 301 /page2.html [my_domain.com...]
Redirect 301 /page3.html [my_domain.com...]
Redirect 301 /page4.html [my_domain.com...]
Could this be considered SPAM by Google?
(moved from 'server side scripting' [webmasterworld.com] due to lack of interest)
Ammon Johns
Redirect 404 /page1.html [my_domain.com...]
The other side of the question is presumably whether Google would credit your home page with the links to those old addresses. Currently, I'd expect it to when usung 301s but people seem to have differing experience of this.
I just moved 28 pages within my site, and I have 301 redirects setup for all of the old urls to new urls. Some of the new urls are on the sames domain, and many are on a new subdomain that I setup for my articles.
On the first cycle after putting the new pages up and with the redirects in my .htaccess file, Google spidered all of the new pages and dropped the old links. Worked just like it is supposed to.
I can't see what you are thinking of doing as being spam.
>404 redirection would make more sense
True, I'm just afraid the user will not continue to other pages of the website. I do use a custom 404 page that includes a site search and a home link, but I guess I don't credit users enough to use them.
>I can't see what you are thinking of doing as being spam
I am leary because the page I wish the users redirected to is the index page, so I really haven't 'moved' anything at all. However, the KWs used to find the old pages exist on the index page where I plan to post an anouncement that the content from the old pages is "now unavailable."
Guess I'll find out about the PR
A return code of 404 means "This page doesn't exist anymore, please drop it from the index without replacement." Adding a "Location" header to a 404 is most likely useless, as the spider should ignore everything else if it sees this return code.
If you want a spider to check out a different page instead, then a 301 is the way to go. A 301 means "This page has moved to 'there' and won't return, please index it at the new location." Any search engine penalizing for 301s would be severely broken.
Oh yeah, LOL - thanks bird
The reason it makes sense to me in this case is that keyplyr gets the users to his site, but the engines don't get dupes or any kind of redirection that's likely to look like spam.
On the other hand, if those pages have incoming links, then 404 is almost certain not to give the PageRank, 302 might and 301 probably IMO, but not always.
I couldn't agree with this more. I think that using a 404 is needlessly overcautious.
When I setup my 301s, most of the content of the pages changed very little. However, there were a few pages that I dropped completely, or changed so much that you wouldn't recognize them. Yet I put a 301 in place anyway because the SEs have those pages listed, and are funneling users to those pages. Not to mention users may have had the pages bookmarked. So using the 301 just makes good sense.
Not all of the SEs are as good as Google at keeping their database current. Some of the other engines (like AV) are way out of date. So a 301 also makes sense for this reason in directing users to the right place. Just based on this fact alone its reasonable to assume that Google wouldn't penalize for this.
You are doing a "permanent move", which a 301 redirect is for. You will have some of the "content" on your home page (keywords and a notice). Seems quite reasonable to me.
If I chose to only temporarily redirect while I took a couple months to rebuild the old pages and put them back online:
Redirect 302 /page1.html [my_domain.com...]
1.) How long would this continue to be respected?
2.) The old pages would continue to stay in the Google SERPs?
Redirect 302 /page1.html [my_domain.com...]
I actually don't expect that 301 vs 302 makes much of a difference for a search engine. If the page isn't served when the spider comes by, then it will probably be missing in the next index. If you then put the page back, it's just a matter of how long the engine takes to rediscover it.
The reason why there is even a distinction between the two is for browsers and bookmark managers. I don't know if there is any software out there that actually implements this, but the idea is that when a browser sees a 301 on a page it has bookmarked, that it can automatically change the bookmark to the new location. It isn't supposed to do so with a 302.
