Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
It seems to me like it does.
Evidence:
* External links through 302 redirects appearing on Google Webmaster Tools
* Google states that not to pass pagerank you have to
- Add a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag
- Redirect the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file
[google.com...]
Anyone tested this lately? There are many sites using 302 redirects, that was the standard way used not to pass pagerank. But now with the nofollow attribute, I wonder if it is still a valid method or nofollow is better.
thanks
There exist some 302 links that have been there for years. They are not really temporary.
The essence of the hijack issue involves whether the source url or the target url gets displayed when there's a cross-domain 302. I just re-read two major posts from Matt Cutts on the topic (here [mattcutts.com] and here [mattcutts.com]) to work toward more clarity.
At this moment, it looks like the 302 hijack issue is more under control - and I'm guessing that a little application of Whois data also helped here. So there certainly is SOME factor helping the target url to rank better. Also, I note that according to Google VP Udi Manber, Google made changes to their PR calculation algorithm back in January of this year (2008.)
Just from noticing how the SERPs seem to work now, I have a feeling that 302 redirects (cross-domain) do send PageRank to the target url today - with one exception involving some same-owner domains like the MLB example in Matt's blog post. The fact that the source url now shows up as a backlink in GWT reinforces that gut feeling, but I haven't tested this with any scientific rigor and I cannot 100% verify.
A "link" that passes through an intermediate url before a script then generates a 302 redirect to another domain is another story. In that case, the script's url is often disallowed in robot.txt, or the nature of the script itself forms a kind of barricade to the passing of PageRank.
A same domain 302 almost always sees the source url displayed in the inde. The target url provides the content for the SERP but does not rank itself. Still, I'd bet that PR does flow THROUGH the target url itself for calculation purposes, Again, that's a gut feeling from studying lots of SERPs and it's not proven by rigorous testing.
If you want certainty in this area, stay away from the 302 redirect. All search engines do not handle it the same way, for one. Google must cope with the cross-domain 302 because so many websites are using it for something other than "temporary" purposes. But just because others like playing in mud puddles doesn't mean we should, too.
www.mydomain.com\redirect.php?id=999999
www.mydomain.com\cgi-bin\redirect.cgi?id=999999
The redirect.php or redirect.cgi is usually not excluded with robots.txt
Checking the HTTP headers for such a link, the script just returns 302 with the new "temporary" location to an external domain.
This is often used for some sort of stats tracking.
I expect the Google algo to use many factors for deciding if sending pagerank or not:
- site reputation
- how old is the "temporary" link
- ID is used in the parm (was this a never confirmed legend that Google does not pass PageRank when ID is present)
- a CGI / PHP script
etc.
But the fact that I saw many 302 redirects from an external site appearing on the Google Webmaster Tools, seems to prove that Google at least knows about the links and does consider them a link to our website. Redirecting via a script is useful for tracking clicks to external websites. But if you do not want to send pagerank, 'nofollow' seems required.
As for 302s passing PR I have no evidence to even have a gut feeling either way.
