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Google pagerank and 301 vs 302

We must be absolutely sure before any change...

         

joempie

9:15 pm on Feb 7, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have some old alias domains and subdomains
(e.g. www..., links..., pics...) that other
sites link to quite a lot.

As most internal links on my site are relative,
these (sub)domains started a life as their own
sites on google (each alias domain DOES however
link to the main domain at least once). The html
for each version is just slightly different.
Sometimes it seems that the subdomain plays an
important role in searching (i.e. subdomain
link.maindomain.com is better found than
maindomain.com/links.php ).

And so I ended up with some alias/sub-domains
with a PR of 1-3-5 and a main page with PR 6.

I would like to consolidate the PRs to the main
domain but am afraid that it will go wrong...

And now to the actual questions:

1. The things are inter-linked. And so i suspect
that they actually push eachother's PR. After all,
google seems to think that they are separate sites,
otherwise it would merge them. If I redirect the
subdomains/aliases to the main site, the links from
them to my main site will disappear as well.... So
will i be shooting myself in the foot?

2. Suppose it would work. How much does a PR3
site add to a PR6 site? This is probably not
a linear thing. Is it logarithmic?

3. The external links would link to a site that
was obviously permanently moved. Will these links
keep counting for the PR of the main site?

4. And this one may be most tricky... If I keep
reading that a 301 is better for a PR than a
302, why do the big guys like cnet and yahoo
etc ALL use 302 for redirecting to www...?

Any help would be much appreciated,
joempie

Marcia

8:29 am on Feb 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>The external links would link to a site that was obviously permanently moved. Will these links keep counting for the PR of the main site?

The links to a page will be counted toward the page it's redirected to with a 301. If you look up the exact URL of the original page location at Google, it'll show up with the title and description snippets taken from the page it's redirected to.

They're combined, but Google still knows which is linked to. If Domain_A is permanently redirected to Domain_B, all the links and PR will count toward Domain_B. Then, if Domain_A is no longer redirected but put up on hosting of its own, it'll show up with the links that actually point to it when it's indexed, including the aggregate PR. Those will no longer count toward Domain_B, which will lose those links and their PR value.

pmkpmk

8:37 am on Feb 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I recently redesigned my complete site. The homepage was PR5, most of the subpages PR4. While redesigning, I changed the site structure too.

For EVERY old page, I made a "RedirectPermanent" to a new page.

Also important:
- The new site runs under a different IP address than the old site
- Some seperate old pages were redirected to ONE new page
- Lots of new pages have turned up.

Well, the homepage is still PR5, but ALL subpages are PR0 now.

However, if you type in keywords typical for these subpages, the still turn up usually high on the first result page. So it seems true that PR is not that important anymore.

synergy

5:18 pm on Feb 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Well, the homepage is still PR5, but ALL subpages are PR0 now.

However, if you type in keywords typical for these subpages, the still turn up usually high on the first result page.
So it seems true that PR is not that important anymore.

Not true. Your internal pages have PR transferred immediately, it's just the toolbar hasnt been updated to reflect it yet. Don't rely on the toolbar for accurate PR numbers.

pmkpmk

8:03 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



All the inner pages are still PR0 - what CAN I rely on the see the real pagerank?

rogerd

8:22 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member



Don't rely on the toolbar for accurate PR numbers

This is particularly true if the pages are dynamic pages with query strings, IMO.

pageoneresults

8:41 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



What CAN I rely on the see the real pagerank?

Nothing. Until Google gets around to updating PR, there is nothing you can do to determine what the true PR is for a page. If the page is performing as you expected, then you are good to go until the next PR update.

joempie

8:49 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



If 301 is better than 302, why are amazon and most other big guys all using a 302 to redirect form ****.com to www.example.com? just because they have enough PR anyaway?

[edited by: Marcia at 8:32 am (utc) on Mar. 10, 2004]
[edit reason] examplified [/edit]

pmkpmk

9:22 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



pageone: Well, my SERPs seem to be OK. Actually the spider is paying a visit almost each day and has almost finished crawling all the new stuff. So I think I'm good to go?

Actually I never configured a 301 vs. 302 or the other way around. I used the "RedirectPermanent" in Apache. Will this make a 301 or a 302? And how can I change it to the other value?

pageoneresults

9:41 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



RedirectPermanent

That is a 301. A 302 is a temporary redirect and instructs the useragent to maintain the requested URI in its index but forward the user to the temporary URI.

I still haven't quite figured out why many use 302 instead of 301. If a resource does not exist, and really never will exist (like a redirect for type-in traffic) than I see no reason why you would want to 302. I would think you'd want to permanently redirect (301) all of those requests.

You'll want to check server headers to make sure your pages are returning the proper HTTP status codes.

pmkpmk

9:43 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



That's exactly what I had in mind. When changing from the old to the new CMS I re-structured the site's pagetree and the old pages have completely been replaced. So the RedirectPermanent is correct.

Hmm...

pageoneresults

9:49 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I can't reiterate this statement enough...

You'll want to check server headers to make sure your pages are returning the proper HTTP status codes.

I've seen many who thought they had a 301 in place only to find out it was returning a 200 status code. Anytime you get into the technicalities of HTTP status codes, you should always double check your work.

Server Header Checker [searchengineworld.com]

pmkpmk

9:53 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Darn... so this:

Status: HTTP/1.1 200 OK

is bad news?

Any idea where I can change this? The .htaccess says "RedirectPermanent ...."

(edit)
Shame on me! I typed the worng URL in the header checker :-) It actually says:

Status: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

so it seems I have configured everything right...
(edit)

[edited by: pmkpmk at 10:11 pm (utc) on Mar. 9, 2004]

incywincy

9:53 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



is pagerank important? pmkpmk stated that his sub pages rank fine even though the toolbar indicates a pr0. let me see what do i prefer a great position in the serps or a great pagerank?

from personal experience using permanent redirects does not affect your position in the serps nor over time your pagerank.

added: you can also check your access logs to make sure you're getting a 302 http status code.

pmkpmk

9:58 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



let me see what do i prefer a great position in the serps or a great pagerank?

Both?

pageoneresults

9:59 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Darn... so this: Status: HTTP/1.1 200 OK is bad news?

Not if you want that page to be found. A 200 status code means all is okay. If you intended for that page to be permanently redirected to another, then yes it is bad news. It means that page is still being indexed and the redirect is not functioning.

It also means that if you have two indentical pages sitting there with an old version and a new version, the old version is still getting indexed and there is a chance that the new version is too (if linked to from somewhere).

pmkpmk

10:34 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



See above (I edited the message about the 200-code). I typed in the wrong URL into the header checker (it's 23:30 here in Europe).

The REAL page gives the correct 301 code...

pageoneresults

10:47 pm on Mar 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



The REAL page gives the correct 301 code...

Does it also show the target URI? Is the correct URI showing that you wanted to permanently redirect to (Location:)?

Server Response: http*//example.com
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
[b]Location:[/b] http*//www.example.com/
Server: Web Server Type
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 153

pmkpmk

8:22 am on Mar 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I guess it does. Look here:


Server Response: http://www.****x.yy/stelle.htm
Status: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 2004 08:19:35 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3xxxxxx
Location: http://www.xxxx.yy/de/jobs.html
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

Seems OK to me.

pmkpmk

9:52 pm on Mar 25, 2004 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I was away for CeBIT and I only had a chance to check my pages again two days ago. And you know what happened? PR is back!

The toolbar now shows PR4 for most inner pages, and PR3 and sometimes PR2 for the new pages which were not present on the old site. The entry page still has PR5.

So for most of the inner pages PR has dropped by 1 point. My incomiming links mostly point to the old page names and therefore generate a RedirectParment when being followed. You think the dropped PR might be some sort of "penalty" for this?