Introducing internal 301s to approx. 60% of the site?

[aakk9999]

The client's developers are changing internal links capitalisation and order of parameters. The old URLs will be redirected to its new URL version.

However, against our best advice, the developers have not changed internal links, so approximately 60% of the internal linking would be performing redirects to the new URL format.

We have told the client that this is a bad idea and that the internal links should be fixed to point to the correct target URL without going via the redirect.

However, owing to some other changes in this release, rather than waiting for the fix, the client is considering putting the site live with all these redirects and contemplating fixing them later and is asking us how bad is bad?

What can we expect if the site goes live where 60% of internal links are now performing redirects?

Whilst we do have reasonably positive experience of changing many links in one go, we have always ensured that technically there were no mistakes and that the internal links point to the correct target URL.

However, we have no experience in introducing new URLs for 60% of the site where the internal links still point to the old URL version.

Is there a risk that the site will tank?
Is there a risk that the site will not recover later on when the internal linking is fixed?
Any timeframes for recoveries?
Any other opinions / advices?

[g1smd]

Yes, the links should point directly to the right URL.

Internal redirects are a "signal of low technical quality".

There's a risk it could tank. However, the redirects are better than the alternatives:
- Duplicate Content if the old URLs continue to show the same content as the new URLs, or
- massive traffic loss if most of the old URLs started returning 404.

Fixing the internal links should be a priority. Run Xenu LinkSleuth over the site and mail the error report to them.

[rowtc2]

Make 301 redirect and keep old internal links 1-2 weeks until Google will replace old urls with the new ones in serps. I think client's developers are doing the correct job.

[aakk9999]

Make 301 redirect and keep old internal links 1-2 weeks until Google will replace old urls with the new ones in serps. I think client's developers are doing the correct job.

I am not sure in this - I have no problem for old URL to rank until Google re-crawls it on its own accord. As I said - we always did replacements straight away and saw no problems.
With regards to replacement later on, unfortunately we are not talking about 1-2 weeks. We are talking possibly months until a new release that would replace the links.

[pageoneresults]

Is there a risk that the site will tank?

That risk is always present when dealing with technical issues such as this. I doubt that you'll find the answer you're looking for as most of us would never do this.

There is absolutely NO REASON why the internal links can't be updated, none whatsoever!

However, against our best advice, the developers have not changed internal links, so approximately 60% of the internal linking would be performing redirects to the new URL format.

I'd be consulting with the client right now and asking them how important those developers are to the team. Why? Because it may be time to replace them if that is their line of thinking.

Us SEOs have a name for these types of Developers - we call them Clueless. Ya, you can go ahead and send them a link to my response too, I'd be happy to discuss this with them. ;)

You should never redirect the client unless the requested URL is actually wrong in some way -- and never link to a "wrong" URL from your own site, regardless of the redirect code returned. jdMorgan

[pageoneresults]

More information on this...

When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot because they contained too many redirects. Please change the URLs in your Sitemap that redirect and replace them with the destination URL (the redirect target).

The above is a message that is displayed by Google when you have too many redirects in your Sitemap file(s). That should give you some idea as to what Google thinks about too many internal 301 redirects.

Based on the reading I've done so far, having internal redirects as you propose IS going to cause issues.

[g1smd]

The simple rule for sitemaps is that they should link only to valid URLs.

If you list redirecting URLs in the sitemap "because you want the bot to see the redirect" you will end up with problems.

You should list only valid URLs in the sitemap. The sitemap lists the URLs that you want to appear in the SERPs.

[aakk9999]

Thanks guys on your replies. What g1smd and p1r say align with what our advice was to the client in the first place - but we wanted an opinion on how bad it would be if the advice was not implemented - and we got our answer.

[lucy24]

More information on this...

When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot because they contained too many redirects. Please change the URLs in your Sitemap that redirect and replace them with the destination URL (the redirect target).

The above is a message that is displayed by Google when you have too many redirects in your Sitemap file(s). That should give you some idea as to what Google thinks about too many internal 301 redirects.

Oh, hey. Has there been a change in google's sitemap handling? There used to be a section in Crawl Errors labeled "In sitemap" where they listed urls they learned about in 2010 or back to the dawn of time from long-since-replaced sitemaps. (If I move or rename files, I change the sitemap. That's what you're supposed to do, isn't it?) Recently the whole section disappeared. Does this mean the computer can now tell the difference between current sitemaps and ones from the historical past?

A terrific improvement, if so.

[rlange]

pageoneresults wrote:
More information on this...

When we tested a sample of the URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs were not accessible to Googlebot because they contained too many redirects. Please change the URLs in your Sitemap that redirect and replace them with the destination URL (the redirect target).

The above is a message that is displayed by Google when you have too many redirects in your Sitemap file(s).

I'm reading that differently. That seems like a warning against individual URLs that redirect too many times rather than too many individuals URLs that redirect.

Maybe the warning needs to be rewritten...

--
Ryan

[g1smd]

Yes it is a warning about a Redirection Chain.