Scenarios to expect from a 301 on Google?

[Cromagnon]

I have only done about five-ten 301 permanent redirects using htaccess-file. Everytime it has been a smooth process with google just indexing the new page on old spots imidiatly. But this time the page totaly dissapeard from top 50. Google came by yesterday, so maybe I am just impatient? What different scenarios can I expect from a 301 redirects?

[tedster]

Sometimes even an internal 301 can take a while for Google to "trust". Factors seem to include complications from canonical issues and the competitive nature of the query terms involved - probably more.

[robzilla]

Sometimes even an internal 301 can take a while for Google to "trust"

(my emphasis)

Would you say that this is even more so for an external 301? I never really considered a trust factor with redirects, apart from relevance. Could one expect the value of a redirect to grow over time, if all things are considered to be "OK"?

[tedster]

Yes, trust issues can be even bigger with external 301's. I wouldn't say that a 301 influence will GROW over time, so much as it is just on a time-delay. Once it kicks in, what you get is what you're going to get.

[robzilla]

Any clues as to what time frame one could expect, and, particularly, what factors that would depend on? I'm sure these factors will differ between internal and external redirects.

[tedster]

My best guess is that the time it takes is related to how well-trusted the site is before the redirect goes into place - past history of heavy penalties, especially.

Also the number of new 301s just introduced, as well as whether there are any redirect chains will play in. Still, this seems to be an area where things are a lot better than just a year or two ago.

[g1smd]

Use Live HTTP Headers for Firefox to check the redirects really do do a single-step 301 to the correct URL.

Test what you get for both www and non-www requests for a range of different page URLs.