do 301s update IBL?

[inertia]

Quick question!

If i change page names / move pages the best thing to do is 301 redirect to the new URL, that i understand! But! Does this also work for all the inbound links to the old URL (e.g. does the search engine see that these links are pointing to a new URL?) or do i need to contact the web masters and get them to change the link manually?

[bartholomew]

The SEs treat the 301 as an announcement that they should disregard the URL which has the 301, and consider the redirect target URL as the permanent replacement URL for that content. In effect they treat old links to the orginal URL as if they were pointing to the new one (if all is done correct), because they treat as if the sites are linking to the content rather than the address. They see that the old links still point to the old URL, but they take it that the content those links voted for is now at new redirect URL, and generally do not give detrimental effect to the site that has used 301.

In practice I have always seen PR and link juice passed well by 301 and no bad effect on rank except sometimes temporary while SEs update.

Despite that, I would always try to get old important link from trustworthy and authority sites changed to point to new URL. No real reason other than I feel more comfortable that way. But no way would I spend time contacting 4,000 sites to ask them to change link!

In my personal experience (despite some people having a few problems) every 301 I have done, whether on Windows servers or Apache server all have worked very well with no issues beyond temporary blip.

[Concept Interest]

I second that! We often do 301's both internally on a domain and externally to a totally different domain, and we have always succeeded to maintain all positions in the SERPs.

No doubt that refreshing your most valuable links is a good idea and should be done. Good luck!

[petec2]

Hi all

whilst on this topic

we are considering 301 redirecting our domain without the www to the verison with www apparently the pr4 we have on the non www can transfer over pr and add some weight to tthe www version which is also pr4- Does anyone know if this is definitely true?


Also if we do the 301 redirect do all urls under that domain redirect to the www version

ie would http://domainname.com/testurl.htm automatically divert to http://www.domainname.com/testurl.htm


and if so do we need to set up the new http://www.domain.com/testurl.htm on the server separately if it doesnt already exist?

i'm a bit of a novice trying to get my head around this 301 thing like plenty others it seems, so if I have misunderstood something obvious, my apologies.

Thanks

Peter

[Orion]

Even though the 301s pass along the link value, it's still a really really good idea to contact those IBLs and get them updated. Nice thing is you don't have to panic and do it today, make it a 6month to 1 year project.

Once you've updated all of them and confirmed there's nothing pointing to the old page/site then you're free to remove the 301s from your site altogether.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Orion

Even though the 301s pass along the link value, it's still a really really good idea to contact those IBLs and get them updated. Nice thing is you don't have to panic and do it today, make it a 6month to 1 year project.

Once you've updated all of them and confirmed there's nothing pointing to the old page/site then you're free to remove the 301s from your site altogether.

One caveat re. removing 301s; if you have people bookmarking your site, those who did so prior to your changing URLs will receive 404 errors if the 301s are removed.

If you're uncertain as to whether or not such is a matter for concern, your server logs will serve to show the number of requests for your favicon file, regardless of whether or not you have one.

[Orion]

very true deepsand!

I wonder if there's a way to read the header info to see if it was a bookmark and update it or notify only those people of it? hmmmm...

I would hope though that some people try to go through and update their bookmarks once a year or so. I know I hardly use them anymore just easier and faster to search for the stuff from scratch than try to find where the heck I bookmarked it LOL...

[Clint1]

Someone here posted a link recently, and that webpage said that doing a 301 is only temporary and the PR will not eventually be passed to the new page. It said that if you want the PR passover to be permanent you have to contact all those that link to you and get them to change the URL! No, unfortunately I don't remember the website.

So this begs the question: have any of you with a decent PR page ever changed the URL of it and 301'd the old URL to the new, and did it retain it's PR permanently, after maybe a year?

[inertia]

Originally Posted by Clint1

doing a 301 is only temporary

In that case whats the difference between a 301 and a 302?

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by inertia

In that case whats the difference between a 301 and a 302?

I think you may be taking that out of context. Look at my post again; the 301, (as the article claimed), is only a temporary solution to redirecting existing IBL's from your old URL to your new URL with regards to PR.

A 301 technically is called a "permanent redirect" and the 302 a "temporary redirect". Apparently PR doesn't see it exactly that way. Again, this according to the article and not me. That's why I asked what I did about anyone testing it for a year or more.

[wige]

It is possible that "outdated" links (pointing to 301, 302, and 404 pages) may eventually lose weight and may even negatively impact the page they are on (because why would a search engine consider a page authoritative that has outdated links and is no longer providing a full resource) but as far as I have seen this is only theory. I believe that this is unlikely because many sites use 301 redirects for tracking purposes and to allow the person creating the link to pass information to the server that is then turned into session variables before the user is redirected to a clean URL.

301 and 302 also serve two very different purposes. There is absolutely no pagerank transferred through a 302. Also, search engines continue to query the original location of a 302 longer than they do with a 301. That is because a 302 redirect indicates that at some point the page or resource will return to that location.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by wige

It is possible that "outdated" links (pointing to 301, 302, and 404 pages) may eventually lose weight and may even negatively impact the page they are on (because why would a search engine consider a page authoritative that has outdated links and is no longer providing a full resource) but as far as I have seen this is only theory.

Perhaps that is to what the article was referring. I'm glad I personally don't have this to worry about (that's one less out of MANY) because I never change main pages. Or, maybe I do have to worry about it. There's a ton of sites linking to my non-www version index page but I've had a 301 redirect from non-www to www for a few years now, and my PR DID drop TWO spots over a year ago, even after getting more IBL's. It's just possible to contact thousands of websites to tell them to change their link to you. A 301 "should" be sufficient.

[tamecrow]

Originally Posted by inertia

Quick question!

If i change page names / move pages the best thing to do is 301 redirect to the new URL, that i understand! But! Does this also work for all the inbound links to the old URL (e.g. does the search engine see that these links are pointing to a new URL?) or do i need to contact the web masters and get them to change the link manually?

Yes, and it'll pass PR as long as it's a single 301 and not a chain.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Clint1

Someone here posted a link recently, and that webpage said that doing a 301 is only temporary and the PR will not eventually be passed to the new page. It said that if you want the PR passover to be permanent you have to contact all those that link to you and get them to change the URL! No, unfortunately I don't remember the website.

So this begs the question: have any of you with a decent PR page ever changed the URL of it and 301'd the old URL to the new, and did it retain it's PR permanently, after maybe a year?

Since Google touts the value of 301s, it's doubtful that they discount any PR passed by them.

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[Clint1]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Since Google touts the value of 301s, it's doubtful that they discount any PR passed by them.

I wouldn't let that sway anyone's thinking on the matter. G can tout the value of many things, yet in their actions can show otherwise. I would like something more concrete and definitive, like an actual case scenario.

[Orion]

we've updated many a site over the years changing them from .htm to .shtml and changing page names from page1.htm to something_descriptive.shtml or .php. replacing sections etc.

We've 301 redirect'ed the pages and NEVER seen a decrease in PR after the next update. Just continue ongoing content development and getting quality IBLs and OBLs.

[Dubbya]

The whole point of using 301's is to maintain link integrity (and PR) and to prevent 404's.

You don't need to ask anyone to update their OBL's and you pass along the value of the IBL to your new page.

Carry on Inertia, it's the perfect solution.

.02

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Clint1

I wouldn't let that sway anyone's thinking on the matter. G can tout the value of many things, yet in their actions can show otherwise. I would like something more concrete and definitive, like an actual case scenario.

As a fellow sceptic, I always advise that one follow the "trust, but verify" path.

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[Clint1]

Originally Posted by Orion

we've updated many a site over the years changing them from .htm to .shtml and changing page names from page1.htm to something_descriptive.shtml or .php. replacing sections etc.

We've 301 redirect'ed the pages and NEVER seen a decrease in PR after the next update. Just continue ongoing content development and getting quality IBLs and OBLs.

That's helpful, thanks.