Google doesn't like 301 redirects?

[victorP]

Sorry if this has been covered but I did a search and didnt find anything..

I was told by a software developer that google doesn't like a sudden change with 301 redirects(when you start redirecting after http://example.com has been established)

The developer agreed that 301 redirects are good practice when you first launch a site.

So I decided to try an experiment. (btw my site is a blog)

I dropped all the 301 redirects out of my htaccess file(yesterday) for the site in question, and TODAY I notice some pages coming out of the supplemental index!

Coincidence? It shall be interesting to see how the rest of december plays out.

[g1smd]

>> I was told by a software developer that google doesn't like a sudden change with 301 redirects <<

They DO like it, but they take a while to adapt to the change. In particular, the old URLs show as Supplmental for many months before they are dropped.

[Umbertide]

I think there might be something here.

We have an issue where we had both widgets.com/Blue_Grommets/ (upper case) and widgets.com/blue_widgets/ (lower case) with a PR4 and PR1 respectively, so we 301'd the upper case respectively to avoid the duplicates. The upper case had a load of backlinks and ranked in top 10 for loads of competitive keyword SERPS; the lc one didnt have any and didnt really rank at all.

Now we have lost rankings across the board, consistent with a PR 1 or so.

So perhaps G is not allowing link strength and/or PR to be passed via a 301 redirect between internal pages?

Any merits in this theory? If so how can it be reversed? Right now our Upper Case page has gone supplemental and my understanding is that once its gone its gone?

thanks

[g1smd]

The redirected URL has been tagged Supplemental - that is as I said above.

The PR hasn't yet been transferred. That will take time; as I hinted above.

These things take time. Many months in fact.

[Receptional]

Well - I would have 301'd the PR 1 onto the PR4 - NOT the other way round.

Going back to the original post,

We have had nothing but success with 301s. However, we first try not to change the filenames at all if we can help it. Then we aim to 301 the minor on to the major so to speak.

The fact that you are a blog may be significant. None of the sites we have actively used 301s on are anywhere near blog like. They are real world companies. We also don't seem to have the supplemental issues that most have (in general - with notable exceptions).

Does that mean by removing the 301s, you have you created new URLs, containing duplicate content? - so google takes them and indexes them into the main index... but in a few days it will decide that it is duplicates of the other URL and you might find both URLS in supplemental. As you say - it will be interesting to see ho December plays out for you.

[Umbertide]

well we redirected from upper case to lower case to reflect what users do in their searches.

so we learnt and just hope they will return. there seems a bit of action on the DCs tonight so fingers crossed/