Are redirects bad for SEO?

Do search engines not like being redirected

[gingerspice]

Hello:
Are redirects bad for search engines? My company creates a lot of redirects and uses them in email campaigns in place of linking to the real URL.

An example is using 'http://event.company.com' instead of the full path -http://www.company.com/events/breakfast_event.cfm.

Do search engines not like this because they are being redirected? I thought I read this somewhere before, but I would like some clarification from anyone knowledgeable.

Personally, I think creating the redirects are a waste of time unless you're using it for offline marketing where you're actually expecting someone to remember a URL.

[SEOMike]

uses them in email campaigns

Chances are pretty small that the search engines will get anything from an email. The only way I could think of SEs getting a URL out of an email is if someone posts the email online with the link intact. Even so, there is a chance that the SEs will find the subdomain redirect on their own. If I were you I'd use a 301 redirect from subdomain the the real URL.

[gingerspice]

Thanks for the reply. I guess the redirects end up being used more than just in emails. They are reference in press releases which get legs and help us get back links to our site. Should we just use the full path instead of redirects?

It seems it would be better to hyperlink the keywords to their exact location than to hyperlink a redirect. "Go to event.company.com for details." We could be saying "Go to the eventname for details."

[caveman]

> Should we just use the full path instead of redirects?

Yes, IMO you should. Links come from all sorts of places. I pretty much assume that any link in an email is findable or at some point might be. Emails find their way to all sorts of places. Same with press releases.

So, why make the SE's work harder and give them redirects, which some SE's <cough, cough> have been notoriously bad at managing.