301 redirect of links to home page: help or hurt?

[ichthyous]

Hi there, I am reorganizing some of my content and want to use a 301 redirect to redirect some of links back to my index page. Will this pass along the page rank of the original page to the new page and should I redirect to just http://www.example.com, http://www.example.com/index.htm, or to just /index.htm. Here is my current redirect code:

redirect 301 /redirectfrompage.html http://www.example.com

or should it be:
redirect 301 /redirectfrompage.html /index.htm

I read that page rank only gets passed along from page to page and not to a domain...is this correct? thanks!

[edited by: tedster at 9:29 pm (utc) on May 30, 2006]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]

[Vadim]

Disclaimer. Only Google knows how it works.

I believe that during your reorganization it is better to preserve all old pages and simply add links to the home page or make "in page" redirection, asking the user permission.

I don't know what exactly happens when redirect several pages with 301 to the home, but expect *no* good result unless you really move the content of these pages to the home page that is hardly possible. 301 means move (content) permanently and any other use may trigger Google spam filter.

Vadim.