Google Link Popularity and 301 Redirects

[shadowen]

Hi,

Situation: A site is transferred from domain1.com to domain2.com, with the domain1 site left with a meta refresh redirect to the new location.

What I would like to know is if the link popularity of domain1 would transfer to the domain2 if a 301 permanent redirect was put in place instead of the meta refresh, or would I need to contact each of the linking webmasters and get them to change the links at there end.

Thanks in advance

[ciml]

Occasianally, Google does something strange with redirects or duplicate content, but normally I'd say that a 301 redirect will from one URL to another will credit the destination URL with the backlinks and PageRank of the redirect's source URL.

[KevinC]

If I setup a 301 redirect from Page A to Page B - do I need to keep Page A on the server with the redirect in place for the life of the site?

or can I delete Page A after google has transferred all links to Page B?

[caveman]

You can and should delete page A. 60 days should do it. There are reports of some SE's getting confused if you leave it up too long...and that seemed to happen to us at least once.

[KevinC]

I am confused though - if PAGE A with the 301 in place is removed - how can a search engine make the connection between inbound links and PAGE B - without PAGE A telling the engines what is going on?

[Chico_Loco]

I am confused though - if PAGE A with the 301 in place is removed - how can a search engine make the connection between inbound links and PAGE B - without PAGE A telling the engines what is going on?

Here's the steps Google woud normally take for a 301:

1. Fetch Page A.
2. Woops - response code is 301, the page has moved to Page B.
3. If Page A no longer exists, but has been PERMANENTLY moved (301'd) to Page B, then the inbound links to Page A should be updated to Page B, since Page A has been permanently moved there.

301 really means the name of this file has changed - but technically it should be the same document (otherwise a 404 would result). Google can't credit Page A since it longer exists.. but since it was just move to Page B - give credit to that page!

Make any sense?

[KevinC]

thanks Chico - that makes sense, but does google then have a database of 301's?

Because if say 8 months later PAGE A is long gone and google crawls the linking page - thus following that link to PAGE A its not gonna find a 301 - its just gonna be a 404 unless they have stored the 301 info.

I'm not sure If I'm wording that properly - do you know what I'm asking?

[Chico_Loco]

I know what you're asking.. that's a good question.

If you remove the 301 redirect in a few months time then the inbound links to Page A will likely go to waste. I do not believe they maintain a database of 301's, although it's not completely impossible. After all you respond with "301 Permanently Moved", so technically I suppose it should remember that it's permanently moved, but I cannot see an SE having a DB of 301's.

The best thing to do (which is also the most difficult) would be to get all those linking to you to update their links!

[KevinC]

ha - ya right, simply no way of getting all my nice deep links changed - so maybe the solution is to keep PAGE A with the 301 direct on the server forever.

Please someone correct me if I'm wrong here.

[jtbell]

so maybe the solution is to keep PAGE A with the 301 direct on the server forever.

You shouldn't need the page, just the redirect. Under Apache, for example, you simply put the redirect command in a .htaccess file in your directory on the server. Google on "301 redirect Apache" or "301 redirect IIS" or something similar for whatever other server software you might be using. Or ask your Web hosting provider about it.

[KevinC]

ya I guess that makes sense - since the 301 doesn't sit on the page itself only in the htaccess - so as long as the .htaccess is in place with the 301 - there will be no problems

[BarkerJr]

From what I've observed, search engines tend to keep the redirected URL in the search results but with no description.

[jdMorgan]

There are many ways to do a redirect, and search engines don't follow some of them very well or at all.

Here's a link to a recent thread with the method I use and recommend on Apache: [webmasterworld.com...]

Be advised that it may take several months for this to work; In the old days, I would say it will take two deep crawl cycles, one to update the URL, and another to credit all the backlinks. With the crawl changes G made in 2003, I'm not sure how to express this accurately yet.

Jim

[KevinC]

I just found out that my server is windows 2000 though - I assumed it was apache. I havn't really been able to find a good or workable solution for windows 2000 - has anybody done this?

[BarkerJr]

Switch to a hoster that uses Linux :[smilestopper])

[jdMorgan]

Do a search for ISAPI rewrite - It provides a lot of the same functionality as mod_rewrite. Actually, your control panel may provide an even simpler built-in method of doing this.

Jim

[KevinC]

thanks for the tip I'll hunt down some info about that.

I would also consider a different host, but its tied into a full E-com back end. The pros out weigh the cons.

[Robert Charlton]

simply no way of getting all my nice deep links changed - so maybe the solution is to keep PAGE A with the 301 direct on the server forever.

As has been described, you don't actually need to keep the page up... just the .htaccess file... but if, say, Page A is another domain, you may need to own the domain forever and keep it hosted sufficiently that there's an .htaccess file redirecting it to the new domain.

Even if you don't redirect an old domain, you may want to own it for a while. There are actually companies out there who buy expired domains... put up content designed to embarrass you... and then offer to sell the domain name back to you, at a slight increase in price.