Redirect 301 - lost PageRank anyway?

[espmartin]

I've recently renamed a sub folder from:

/tips-tricks/

To:

/web-design-tips-tricks/

The original folder, and subpages within that, all had a PR5!

I simply thought that with a 301 Redirect (.htaccess) redirecting
the old to the new, that my PR would "redirect" as well, keeping
those pages with the same PR5.

I've learned the hard way that it doesn't!

So, other than redirecting traffic, the 301 does NOTHING for SEO?

[Paz]

Hi,

Welcome to the forum!

The 301 redirect should work; but it takes time.

Also the timing of the implementation of the redirect is important. If you set it up shortly before the last toolbar PR update, then you would have been unlucky.

When did you set it up?

Anyway, the next public PR update will probably be around January, and I'm sure you'll be back up at PR5 then.

Cheers,
Paz.

[espmartin]

[QUOTE=Paz]Hi,

Welcome to the forum! ... When did you set it up?[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the welcome!

It was set up about two weeks ago. I'm hoping for the update to happen soon.
January is the expected date? Can't we persuade Google to do it sooner :p

[SEO Madrid]

We tried to put the 301 redirect in place and lost all rankings for a while. We didn't have the patient to wait and see if they came back, so removed it and the rankings came back. Is this normal? We did it one year ago, so maybe it was something that happened at that time with Google.

[jocelyn]

301 are working good... if the page did not change, the new will replace the old url keeping the same rankings. If you changed the content, then it might lose the position it had in the serps.

When there is a major update going on, it's not really the good timing to do such changes, it's daily crawling routine is different and it can take more time or you could lose the serps until the 301 is finally processed properly. My friend had that bad timing and he lost the rankings... told him to let it be, it will come back as soon as the update settles.

I never had a bug with a 301, but I never did it in the middle of an update like my friend did.

[SEO Madrid]

Cheers Jocelyn. Actually, we updated the content of most of the pages, and we´re in the middle of the jagger update, so I see it risky. We may do it with very specific pages to see how it affects the rankings once the update is settled.

[Paz]

Hi,

I've done a few major redirects now, and each time it's worked out really well, but they killed the site in Google (and Yahoo) for a few weeks, but in MSN it was pretty seamless.

The first time I tried it was for a friend and I thought he was going to kill me... haha

Cheers,
Paz.

[Leoweb]

Hi Guys,
I use the 301 redirect on many sites and it works..(after same weeks) without PR changes or strange mistakes on the big G. side

[espmartin]

I'm still waiting for Google to honor my two 301's,
both made end of November.

The first change I made was I created a sub domain,
and move content from a sub folder to it. The other
was a simple sub folder rename. I've 301'ed both and
am patiently waiting for PR to flow once again.

Regarding 301 and PR:
Is is true that with a redirect, PR flows much more
quickly down into a sub folder than to a sub domain?

Yes for general PR flow, it moves down your site, following
internal links. But again, this is regarding specifically the
flow of a 301.

[Paz]

Hi espmartin,

You won't see the PR changes in the toolbar until the next the update, but the acid test of how the PR "flows" is what happens in the serps for the keywords you are targetting on the relevant pages. If you could share your experiences of how you have performed in the serps in the last few weeks, I'm sure people would be happy to hear them!

I could well believe that simple page/ folder redirects propagate more quickly than subdomain redirects, but I don't know because I've never tried it.

Cheers,
Paz.

[bigpixels]

How do any of you know when Google is doing an update? Is there a set schedule or is it just a guestimate? I have some pages I'd like to move, but after reading this thread I'm a bit afraid to do it and lose my pagerank...

[jocelyn]

[QUOTE=bigpixels]How do any of you know when Google is doing an update? Is there a set schedule or is it just a guestimate? I have some pages I'd like to move, but after reading this thread I'm a bit afraid to do it and lose my pagerank...[/QUOTE]
Slower crawling, jumping in the serps, cache being older than reported by the freshdates, new pages not getting indexed on the usual timeframe... all are symptoms of some update activity.

google usually crawls all my pages everyday on most of my sites and usually add new pages in about 2 days. Lately it's been more like taking one or two weeks insteads of days, so there is still intensive computing activity from google that slows down page crawling.

Yesturday most my sites got crawled as they usually are, so googlebot is getting more time to do it's stuff... when it's back to it's normal behavior, you should be able to fire the changes and improve the chances that they are successfull and quickly implemented.

[Paz]

Hi,

Good stuff there, I'd just add that you can see a little about the history of Google's backlink and toolbar updates here:
http://www.seocompany.ca/pagerank/page-rank-update-list.html

Google updates the toolbar PR once every three months or so, but the actual PR, is updated much more frequently - possibly daily.

So as Joc says, when you make major site changes just before an update, all hell can break loose for at least a week, last time it was more like a month.

However, if you've already made changes and the update comes, it's not the end of the world for your PR - because the real PR will catch up quite quickly, even though you might have to wait a few months to see it in the toolbar.

Cheers,
Paz.