Redirect URL and Inbound Links

Redirects affecting link value and PageRank

[cruzer2006]

Hello,

Just wanted to get some feedback what you guys think about redirect url and passing link value and PageRank? Here I will be talking about having two identical pages ie blog posts with exactly same content and want to redirect to only 1 page.

The thing is the first blog post was already indexed and I don't know why that post was submitted again. So that gives two similar pages. I told the blog owner to delete the duplicate blog post and what he did instead is do a redirect(maybe 301 or meta refresh) from the first post to the second post. The first blog post was already indexed and probably receiving some traffic this is why he didn't delete it.

The first blog post is still indexed while the second one doesn't appear in the search since it has been redirected to I suppose.

Examples:

yourblogname.com/abc.html - already indexed but only used to redirect to abcd.html.

yourblogname.com/abcd.html - redirected to from the first one.

My question is do I get any backlink count and benefit and even PageRank value from abcd.html? I read that redirect urls do not pass full link value and PageRank but I just want to get more feedback. There is some debate on this issue.

Anyone has any experience with this? Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

[g1smd]

You'll get benefit from the new page once it has been indexed.

The other site should have redirected to the page that was already indexed.

The URL that now redirects will soon drop out of searchengine listings if it is a 301 redirect.

Using a meta_refresh is a bad idea. If the other site cannot do a proper 301 redirect, using rel="canonical" would have been a better option.

You should check the new page using "View Source" and make sure there is not a rel="canonical" element pointing to the URL that now redirects. If there is, then you have an infinite loop. In that case, Google will either ignore the technical error and list the page, OR will become confused and remove both copies from their index.

[cruzer2006]

Thanks for your reply g1smd. Actually the new page hasn't been indexed and it should have been because blog posts are indexed fast. It doesn't seem to get indexed because of the redirect.

In fact, there is no other site. There is only 1 blog. The same blog post redirecting to the same blog post from the same blog. Only difference is the page name.

yourblogname.com/abc.html

yourblogname.com/abcd.html

abc.html contains a redirect code which takes the user to abcd.html. abc.html was already indexed but the blog owner decided to put the content in a new page called abcd.html and hence he did a redirect from abc.html to abcd.html.

I can't even view the source code of abc.html to check the rel="canonical" because as soon as I visit abc.html it automatically goes to abcd.html. I checked the source code of abcd.html and noticed there is <rel="canonical" href="abcd.html"> so I guess there is no infinite loop in that case.

Looks like abc.html hasn't dropped out at all. I wanted abcd.html to get indexed so that I can benefit for link value etc... I think it's rather a rel=canonical being used and not a 301 or meta refresh. So will the URL that redirects drop out of the search engine listings if it's a rel=canonical?

Any more thoughts?