301 redirect chains + link juice

[jamiewhite]

Having a debate in the office today about redirect chains and whether link juice is passed through.

So if we have Page A ->301-> Page B ->301-> Page C, is the link juice of Page A passed all the way through to Page C, or is it held within Page B?

I was always under the impression that it was passed through but would diminish with each step - but I'm being argued against!

[aakk9999]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, jamiewhite,

I was always under the impression that it was passed through but would diminish with each step

Yes, this is what Google says. Originally the information was that around 15% of pagerank is lost. But then couple of years ago Google said that the loss of pagerank via redirect is the same as the loss of pagerank through a link. We discussed this here:

Matt Cutts Answers How Much PageRank is lost through a 301 redirect
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4548792.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Now, if the page was NOT redirected, there would not be another step to get to that page so based on the above information, redirect does lose PageRank.

[Robert Charlton]

I was always under the impression that it was passed through but would diminish with each step

This is correct to a point, and is also perhaps why your friends suggest it might stop at page B.

The thread aakk9999 links to is probably our best thread on this aspect of chained redirects, and it's worth emphasizing that, because the link juice diminishes, there eventually is a cutoff point... but Matt Cutts isn't precise about how many redirect that is. In a way he can't be precise, because he can't specify all the conditions that might affect the source url.

Here's my paraphrase, quoted in that thread, regarding what Matt has to say about the length of a chain...

Matt discourages chained redirects.... If you can do it in one hop, that's ideal. Google is willing to follow multiple hops... but if you start getting up into 4 or 5 range, that's a little bit dangerous, since Google might decide not to follow all those redirects. Keep it down to 1 or 2 or maybe 3.

So I can see from this where you and your friends might have each gotten your particular opinion on the topic. I try to keep it down to 1 or 2 if possible.

If you're deeply interested in the topic, btw, I would read not only the above thread aakk9999 cites, but also the thread linked to in the above, which I'll repeat here, to avoid a chain....

Can there be too many 301s and can they affect rankings?
November, 2012
https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4519856.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[lucy24]

It's a non-question anyway, because multiple redirects are bad for human visitors and not so terrific for your server either. And nobody, anywhere, is saying that multiple chained redirects are good for rankings-- let alone so fantastically good that it would outweigh the harm to yourself and your human visitors.

[Rob_Banks]

I have a site that redirects from the name server to the hosting server using a 301. That shouldn't impact user experience, but it does cost me maybe .15 in link juice. I also have a couple other ones that redirect from name server to host server, then link to destination site. That costs about .28 in link juice.

Links and redirects both reduce about the same amount in value, as I recall Matt Cutts in a video, he waffled on the actual percentage drop saying it could be .15 or .20 Either number is probably good for calculation purposes.