301 Redirects and google

Are they punished currently?

[Yamagotchi]

I am trying to get a 301 Redirect done on my site, but I did a search and noticed alot of topics such as [webmasterworld.com ] that suggest google had a bug that banned sites that used a 301 (that topic is from july this year).

Has this 'bug' been addressed, is it safe to add a 301 to my site?

Also, I have a webhost that 'used to code' for search engines, he is an extremely nice guy but does not want to enable the rewrite engine/redirect features on apache because he 'thinks they are what gets you in trouble with the SE's'

If I could get a direct statement from someone that 'works at google / other engine' saying this IS definitely the way to go and having multiple domains W/O a 301 is bad, I might could talk him into it...

(he is a really nice host and I would rather stick with him than having to go find a new one)

BTW, with a 301PR, does google 'merge' the PR for both sites so that when it see's a new link for either it will adjust the PR regardless of which DN it is pointing to?

(I have people who constantly add links to both DN's and I don't have power over how people add my link, it does not really matter I guess because I will be doing the 301PR regardless - once I talk my host into it - but it would be nice to know) 0_o

TIA!

(posted similar question under an older thread in DNs, but saw no response and I am having problems sleeping at night at the thought of google banning me... Please forgive the crosspost!)

[jdMorgan]

Yamagotchi,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

While others have reported problems, I have used this technique with good results.

A direct statement [google.com] from Google. See 3rd paragraph of Change the URL of your website.

You must do your best to get other sites to link to the "correct" domain name, and remove all duplicate content from all but the correct domain. Once your alternate domains are redirected, other webmasters will be redirected when they visit them, so they will then be much less likely to link to these alternate domains.

Being as nice as possible, tell your host, "No redirect priveleges, no more customer."

Hope this helps,

Jim

[Visit Thailand]

On one site we use a few hundred 301's because we moved some files from one directory to another and changed all .htm to .shtml and so far touch wood three or four months on no problems.

[Marcia]

No problems, and links pointing to the old URL have been treated as though they point to the new.

[coco]

What about changing the DNS for the old domain so it just points to the new IP, wouldn't this preserve the link pop and no one has to update bookmarks etc. I know google sometimes has problems resolving multiple domains to IPs but generally SE sort this out.

[Yamagotchi]

all the DN's point to the same IP/place currently, but I am still listed twice in google and I wanna be sure I don't have google ban me as it sounds like a very traumatic experiance.

I e-mailed my webhost so hopefully I will get a redirect enabled soon...