Using A 301 Redirect On 1,000's of URL's

[kidder]

One of our established sites is getting a full upgrade with lots of new functions, it has several thousand pages indexed and ranking in Google. The developer has advised me he want's to redirect away from the old URL's using a 301 to "clean things up".

These are the exact reason for the proposed change

1. To simplify the structure.
2. To allow better organization.
3. The current setup is flawed.

The current URL structure is working but I'm advised the changes will improve things. I've not had any need to use 301's in the past so I wanted to get some feedback from people with hands on experience.

[vero]

If you're going to change the structure and url's, you would definitely want some kind of redirect. From what I understand, Google's page rank is based on many things, including age of site. A redirect theoretically lets your new url inherit some of this from the old url; otherwise the new url appears as just that to search engines - a new url with no history and no page rank.
In site's I've had over the years, I've used htaccess to do the redirect, and just left it there to redirect any links from other sites that I wasnt aware of.

[jd01]

My best advice is get it right this time...

Yes, within a domain 301s will pass weight and 'history'* AFAIK, but keep in mind 'cool URLs don't change', so if they need to change, change them, but make sure things are thought through for long-term use and structure prior to changing.

I have personally redirected large numbers of pages, but it is always better and leaves less room for error, hiccups, and rankings impact to 'set and forget' URLs.

I have read where quite a few well respected members would advise you to leave them alone, unless there is an indexing issue, say with the number of parameters or an id=value in a query_string they contain.

Justin

* No weight will be passed through multiple or 'stacked' redirects, so make sure visitors go directly to the new URL with the first redirect...

Example:
STACKED REDIRECT: example.com/old-page.html is redirected to www.example.com/old-page.html for canonicalization correction and is then redirected to www.example.com/new-page.html with the new redirect.

SINGLE REDIRECT: example.com/old-page.html is redirected DIRECTLY to www.example.com/new-page.html, correcting canonicalization and page in a single redirect.

The difference is usually in the order of the rules applied, and may appear small, but the second example will pass weight, while the first will not.

[BradleyT]

The difference is usually in the order of the rules applied, and may appear small, but the second example will pass weight, while the first will not.

Let's say we have a redirect from
example.com to www.example

and a redirect from
example.com/old to example.com/new

How do we order it to retain weight passing?

[tedster]

example.com/old should redirect immediately to www.example.com/new - that's all it takes.

[g1smd]

See the Apache forum here at WebmasterWorld for a LOT more discussion about the correct order of redirect and rewrite rules.

It is a topic that gets mentioned at least several times per month.