Moving three sites onto the one domain.

How to minimise PR loss.

[mack]

I have three websites each with similar, but unique content and each on it's own domain and webspace. I now want to move all the content onto the one website using my prefered domain name. The obvious method is to move my pages to the server and 301 the other 2 sites using htaccess. My prefered domain has a PR6 the other 2 sites have a PR 6 and a PR5. How much pagerank do I stand to loose by doing this. Would it be beneficial to use refresh redirects, or woudl this be concidered spamm. any opinions on this would be apreciated.

[mack]

When I made the origional post the active list was playing up. Hope no one minds me giving it a nudge back up.

[jdMorgan]

mack,

I haven't done what you describe before. All I have done is to move a site to a new domain and server using 301 redirects (No PR was lost). But my reading here at WebmasterWorld indicates that the right thing to do is to 301 the other two sites to your combined site. As I understand it, that will avoid dup content issues and contribute some of the PR from the other two sites to your new combined site.

Has anybody else here done this? If so, please give mack the benefit of your experience!

Jim

[mack]

Thanks for the reply Jim.

So when I use a 302 you suspect that some PR will be passed on to the site that I intend to use?

[KakenBetaal]

I've a related question - if you 301 redirect a page after renaming it, does the PR that inbound links to the page supply get transferred to the new page?

[jdMorgan]

mack,

301, not 302!

KakenBetaal,

The PR followed my 301's for an entire site when I moved it to a new domain and server.

In the long term, it is undoubtedly better to go get everyone who links to you to update their links. But in the meantime, a 301 redirect tells the smart SE's that the page has moved, just like a postal change-of-address form.

If you are not moving a site, but rather are simply renaming a page or redirecting requests for an old page to a new page with a different name, then a 303-See Other Resource redirect might be more appropriate. But I've never used one, and I don't know if all 'bots would handle it properly.

Jim