Double Redirects 301 to 302. Double Trouble?

Has anybody experimented or seen such an issue before?

[hightechharry]

I am in real trouble. My client is changing from an old company brand name to a new one. Both domains have identical content; navigation & most importantly they are hosted on a same server. Old domain is 8 years old with PR of 7 & coming on competitive keywords in google & other search engines. On the other hand new domain is just 2 years old with same PR7?

Again I am confused why it happened?

I am confused about which type of redirection will be good for the site. I don't want to loose any rankings & PR straightaway.

I have heard about 302 is good to change the brand name, apply 302 for 6 months when the new site get some kind of status in search engines then change it with 301. Is it right to do?

Also what my client is doing he already have done some internal 302 redirects on old as well as on new domain (worth mentioning here sites are identical). When user opens the site www.olddomain.com he automatically redirect to www.olddomain.com/home/index.htm same type of redirect has applied on a new domain.

Now what kind of redirect I should use? I know 301 is more safer than 302. But if I use 301 to redirect www.olddomain.com to www.newdomain.com. It will become double redirect, as www.newdomain.com will again go to www.newdomain.com/home/index.htm

So now what my situation is if I apply 301 redirect. It will work like this.

www.olddomain.com 301 -->>> www.newdomain.com

& again it will redirect to

www.newdomain.com 302 -->>> www.newdomain.com/home/index.htm

To create more trouble both sites open with both www & non-www versions. So as you can judge I am dealing with all bad SEO issues. : (

Has anybody faced or experimented with this kind of double redirects? And if anybody had done this before what were the results. Can anybody provide me any case study regarding this? IMO it’s a topic of research for most of SEO’s as well.

Any SEO Expert out there!

[jonrichd]

Harry,

It sounds to me like Google already realizes that these two domains are the same. The PR7 for both domains is the big giveaway. Does domain 2 ever show up in the search results by itself?

If Google does think your two domains are the same already, then doing the 301 from old to new is probably the best way to go.

As far as the 302 from / to /home/index.htm, what do the internal links on the website point to -- / or /home/index.htm? If the point to /, then you might be better off using a 'silent' 302 redirect that doesn't change the URL in the browser window, but does display the page from /home/. If they point to /home/index.htm, you might consider changing the redirect to make it a 301.

[hightechharry]

Thanx for the reply Jonrichd,

Very few pages are indexed of second domain (new domain) & on few keywords it comes in the serps. Its a situation like over 3000 pages are indexed of old domain & under 1000 pages are indexed of new domain, which hardly come up in the SERPs. Google is not picking up the duplicate pages, once a page is indexed under old domain, the same page don't indexed under new domain & vice versa.

As far as /home/index.htm is concerned, very few pages are under /home folder (& few pages are indexed in search engines). Even sitemap is under /home folder & its not indexed.

If I use "silent" 302, will it be a bad practice, as the actural url will not come in the browser window.

[Evis]

First clear the issues of www.newdomain.com redirection to another directory(i.e www.newdomain.com/home/index.htm). Coz applying redirection on www.olddomain.com to direct www.newdomain.com/home/index.htm not gonna help because you want old domain to encash the value(or wieght) of new domain that www.newdomain.com (not www.newdomain.com/home/index.htm)