The facts about a 301 redirect

[sanjaydiptel]

I want to change my domain name that has 4 years of indexing and thousands of websites linking to it as a resource. However, as important as this name change is to me...I only want to do it if I can be absolutely sure that the new domain name (via a 301 permanant move) will inherit the backlinks and pagerank (in googles case) of the old domain.

Anybody have experienced insight on this?

Thanks
Sanjay

[seo guy]

Yes, I can guarantee you that if you implement your 301 redirect properly that you will get full credit for backlinks and your pagerank will propogate, usually takes 2-3 months for full switch though.

Why are you switching if I may ask?

[sanjaydiptel]

Hi Morgan,

To answer your questin. I own a regional directory that we're going national with in a few months. The directory is going from being an Internet directory (covering a specific area code) to becoming a national eCommerce portal & Internet directory. Although the content from the directory will mostly still exist in the portal...it will only be a small piece of the entire portal. I want to do a 301 redirect because I want the national domain to 'inherit' all the power of the regional domain...which has hundreds of websites throughout the state linking to it over the years. I realize I'll remain most powerfully optimized in my state...but I think it's a good place to start. What do you think?

Sanjay

[jocelyn]

[QUOTE=seo guy]... usually takes 2-3 months for full switch though...[/QUOTE]
Yes... basically 2 full PR/BL updates.
Did it to my links.xxx page just 2 updates ago and full power is back...

Question : can you just redirect / to www.seo-guy.com and it will 301 everyting on the old domain to the corresponding files on www.seo-guy.com.

Example : www.olddomain.tld/subdir/file.tld ----> www.newdomain.tld/subdir/file.tld

So only one redir would do the whole job? I never had to redir a full domain.

[seo guy]

If your filenames are the same from old domain to new domain Im pretty sure you can do a wholesale swap but if not your looking at a big job
Go to bed Joc lol

[slic]

I've used 301's on a number of occasions with rebuilds on a large site, works flawlessly with Google. Be careful how you use them though, it's not Google you'll upset, it's Inktomi, which have gotten tough of late and will drop you like a hot potato if it finds a redirect it doesn't like...

[Cyber-SEO]

Sweet, just what i needed :D i'm looking to open a new site and will have the same exact content on both. One site for Canadian shoppers and another for U.S. shoppers i hope google don't kick my ass for it.

[SEO_AM]

Hey Joc, I did a 301 on a couple of pages and have gone through 2 updates without a transfer update. I think sometimes it might stretch to 3 updates. I will let you know if the full transfer takes place on the next update.

[owlcroft]

First: if you are changing nothing on the site but the actual domain name--that is, the directory structure and directory and file names are unchanged--sure, one line in the .htaccess file and the job's done.

Second: be aware that Yahoo seems to have decided that they will not honor 301 Redirects, and may even penalize for them, regardless of circumstances (including such simple, honest things as a domain-name change).

Third: while you're at it, be sure you have lines in your .htaccess that specify one or the other of the "www." forms--with or without--as your "true" domain by 301-redirecting the other form to the wanted one. So very many webmasters let their sites be linked at the choosing of others, sometimes as www.mywonderfulsite.com and sometimes as just mywonderfulsite.com--which can split the value of your backlinks, in the worst possible case in half.

It's unclear why it takes so long for redirects to transfer linkage--it ought to be essentially instantaneous--but so many things about The Great And Powerful Google are incomprehensible that what's one more?

Fourth: if your changeover is not 1:1, meaning that you are making some internal changes too, try to make those changes in a way that a "regular expression" can pick them up en masse, so you can get by with only a few more lines in your .htaccess file. Things like renaming individual directories aren't much of a problem. But if you can make the rename generic--for instance, prepend the same term to each directory name--it's that much the easier to write a generic change statement.

[Nick0r]

I've used a few 301 redirects as I changed my domain a short while ago. I'm still waitings to see the results.

[jocelyn]

[QUOTE=SEO_AM]Hey Joc, I did a 301 on a couple of pages and have gone through 2 updates without a transfer update. I think sometimes it might stretch to 3 updates. I will let you know if the full transfer takes place on the next update.[/QUOTE]
I think the BL of this update are screwed, like many others.
I think the PR was adjusted also.

Did it at least go half-way ?

[SEO_AM]

Nope! 0/10 w/0 BL's. I agree, I think G blew it on BL's and the transfer to PR this last update. I'll nail it on this next one.

[jen]

[QUOTE=Nick0r]I've used a few 301 redirects as I changed my domain a short while ago. I'm still waitings to see the results.[/QUOTE] Any results yet from your domain change and 301 redirects? Especially any details about how Yahoo! has handled them - was Owlcraft proved correct?

[QUOTE=owlcroft] be aware that Yahoo seems to have decided that they will not honor 301 Redirects, and may even penalize for them, regardless of circumstances (including such simple, honest things as a domain-name change).[/QUOTE]

[Bela Flor]

I put this in the SEO Discussion area, but have not received an answer to my question except for SEO Bob helping out by asking me about mod_rewrite on this server, but I do not have it on this one. So any how I thought this would be a perfect place to post to see if I could get the answer to the question.

"I know that this has been asked before, but when I went and looked back at older post I was not able to figure out what was the best way because there were so many. So I will post what I think was the best and see if it is correct or not.

What I need to do is move a whole link directory over to a subdomain from the main domain: example would be www.mydomain.com/links to www.mysubdomain.mydomain.com/resources. The way that I did this was through the following code. The code was put at the top of the page for all of the pages within the link folder.

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location", "http://mysubdomain.domain.com/resources/file-name.html"
%>

Is this the correct way to do the 301 redirect so that the search engines now see the new pages as though they were the old pages.

Thanks"

The main thing I am looking for is to see if the search engines (google) will transfer the PR and see the two different pages as one.