How often can I redirect?

Is there a penalty for doing a 301 redirect on the same page too often?

[Malibucreek]

Hello,

In December 2005, I rewrote my venue directory website to replace the domain.com/foo.cfm?location=1234 URLs with more SEO-friendly domain.com/venue_name/ URLs.

*Except* that I used underscores instead of hyphens between words in the venue names. Since I've been told by many folks whom I respect that Google better rewards hyphens instead of underscores, I'm contemplating switching the URLs again.

I wrote my CMS in ColdFusion and used a CFHeader tag to generate 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new. And it wouldn't take much effort to write a new script to overwrite all those underscore-using flat files with CFHeader 301s redirecting to new URLs, which would use hyphens as space placeholders instead.

But would I be hurting myself by installing 301s on the majority of pages of my site for the second time in less than two years?

The bulk of my SE traffic comes to my home and section front pages. Frankly, I got better SE traffic to the venue detail pages four years ago (when I used the passed variable URLs). That SE traffic was declining from 2003 to 2005, which is why I made the switch to underscore URLs. That switch, however, hasn't helped boost my SE traffic to the venue detail pages significantly.

(FWIW, almost all of my inbound links are to my homepage, using my site name as the anchor text, and are the result of news industry coverage of my site. I've never traded, sold or bought links with anyone. Homepage is PR7, if that means anything anymore.)

Should I go ahead and make the switch? Or sit tight? TIA.

[bwnbwn]

Sit tight makes very little difference _ or - not sure were you read how important it was but the differnece is not worth the effort or possible problems that might occur.

[tedster]

My experience is that a "chain" of redirects can lose the backlink influence of any inbound links - so whatever you decide to do, maintain only one 301 redirect for any inbound link to reach it's proper target URL.

[Malibucreek]

Good point. My inclination at this point is to sit tight, but I'd definitely change the original cfheader tag to redirect to the new URL, rather than keep it as is, sending old IBLs through two 301s.

[Robert Charlton]

...Since I've been told by many folks whom I respect that Google better rewards hyphens instead of underscores, I'm contemplating switching the URLs again.

I think the reward is only liable to occur when you get a url-in-anchor link to an interior page. In my experience, this happens so seldom that I'd say the change is really not worth the risks.

[g1smd]

The key, if you do any redirection, is to make sure that URL A does not redirect to URL B and then on to URL C. A redirection chain will cause you problems.

URL A should redirect directly to URL C.
URL B should redirect directly to URL C.