Site redirecting URLs for Google?

[trueMarketing]

We have recently restructured our whole search engine/directory database and all URLs so that we do not lose all of the traffic from the old version of the site.

Basically, our old links looked like this:

[209822987987.com...]
and now it redirects to:
[209822987987.com...]

These redirects were set up using Javascript and I'm wondering if we will get penalized for sending traffic to the exact same page as Google cached before we made the change?

We're not manipulating any end results or spamming, simply wanting to not lose the traffic to 404 pages.

Does snyone have any experience in this area or how Google might view it?
Should we just build custom 404 pages? Are these types of redirects worth it or safe?

Thanks a lot for any advice!

[jdMorgan]

trueMarketing,

Google is not JavaScript enabled (as of today, anyway), so it won't see your JavaScript redirects.

I suggest a server-level 301-Moved Permanently redirect, which will avoid any duplicate-content issues. There are lots of threads on that subject available here. ASP, PHP or PERL server-side scripted solutions might be alternatives, since they can also modify the server response header.

Jim

[rrl]

I just went through this. An easy way to redirect an entire site, assuming all of the file names are the same is to do the following:

redirectmatch 301 /oldfoldername/(.*\.html)$ [newdomainname.com...]

I had a website nested in another and moved it to its own domain name.

[godl1]

Does such a redirect form mySearch-words.com to myDomain.com count as a link for google's PageRank?

I have 2 domains for the same content, and as this is not liked by google i put the redirect on.

Does the 2nd domain help anything?

Greetings,
Godl

[jdMorgan]

godl1,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!

Yes and no... or rather, no and yes:

A redirect does not count as a link. However, you may have some benefit from keyword-in-domain on the second (the redirected-from) domain. It is not a good idea to actively promote that second domain, though. While the search engines may allow for a few "old" domains with a few "outdated" incoming links, above a certain point they are likely to spot domain-name spamming for what it is. (And no, I don't know where they might draw that line).

Jim