How retain the site traffic and use a redirect

[sviba]

I have two websites like domain1.com and domain2.com and we have good amount of traffic for those two websites.

Previously we had 301 redirected from domain2.com to domain1.com, so all domain2.com backlinks and traffic transferred to domain1.com but after few days doamin1.com got very little traffic from domain2.com

Again we changed from 301 to 302 redirection concepts for the reasons gaining better traffic and then few days the backlinks again transferred from domain1.com to domain2.com, but now we are not retain the old traffic (good amount traffics)

Any one has Idea, why these things are happening like this? Whether it’s possible to retain the previous Traffic?

Thanks,
Vijay

[tedster]

If you are talking about Google Search traffic, then you need to wait longer than "a few days". There is almost always a dip while Google takes time to process a new redirect - sometimes several weeks or even months. If your non-search traffic dropped off, then look for technical errors in your implementation of the 301.

By the way, stay with a 301 Permanent redirect and not a 302 Temporary. With a 302 the original domain urls will stay in the index as well as those from the target domain, giving you duplicate urls -- that is never a good idea.

[sviba]

Hi Tedster,

You are right; I am talking about Google Search. We need domain2.com traffic to domain1.com, but after 301 redirection that’s happen for few days, so we thought to retain the old traffic, so that we changed 301 to 302, now Search Engine can able to read and rank the domain2.com but User cant see the domain2.com because we did redirection to domain1.com, so our analysis and our implementation is workout in the Backlink transfer, but not happen in the Traffic…

Any Idea about retain the domain2.com traffic at the same time I would like to show my domain1.com site instead of domain2.com

[tedster]

301 redirects do NOT have an immediate effect in the search rankings. If your old urls no longer resolve directly, then they will fall out of the Google search results. But Google does take time to process new 301 redirects, especially when they point to a different domain. This topic comes up so frequently that we've got one of the good threads about it in the Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

See these related discussions:
Advice on moving a site to a different domain [webmasterworld.com]
How long does it take to update 301 redirects site-wide? [webmasterworld.com]

Now you've got a situation where you redirected one way, then reversed that. Google will probably take a long time to sort that out and return trust to any of your urls. Except for verifying the technical accuracy of your redirects, I suggest no futher sitewide changes at all. IMO, you will not quickly regain your previous traffic in any event, and more site-wide changes on either domain will just drag out the process.

If you feel that you absolutely "must" change the redirect yet another time, then know you may have an even longer wait for traffic to come back.