How many jumps between 301 redirects is acceptable?
-
For example, I have a page A that should be redirected to page D, but instead A redirects to B, B redirects to C and C redirects to D. It's something I came across and wondering if its worth the dev time to change it.
Thanks!
-
Fantastic! Thank you!
-
The answer is one.
Alhouth I have seen Matt Cutts (Google) state they follow more then one, each hop including the first leaks juice, he also stated they do not keep following but did not give a number
Bing states one.
http://perthseocompany.com.au/seo/reports/violation/the-page-contains-unnecessary-redirects
-
301 redirect chains are bad. If it's important to you to get the link juice to get from page A to page D, you should change it to just one redirect from A --> D. Matt Cutts talked to Rand about it on a whiteboard Friday http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-interview-googles-matt-cutts-on-redirects-trust-more:
Is It a Bad Idea to Chain Redirects (e.g. 301-->301-->301)?
"It is, yeah."
Matt was very clear that Google can and usually will deal with one or two redirects in a series, but three is pushing it and anything beyond that probably won't be followed. He also reiterated that 302s should only be used for temporary redirects...but you already knew that, right?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
301 Redirects from Subdomain to Location Pages
I have a client site that is getting redesigned. Its a multi location service provider. Currently (for whatever reason) the location pages are sub domains. https://<location-name>.site.com/ In the new design the locations will be on the main domain. https://site.com/locations/<location-name> We are considering using 301 redirects from the current sub domains to the new location pages on the main domain. The current sub domains are setup on a multi-site with A records for each one in our GoDaddy account. Would like to get feedback on any unforeseen SEO issues that anyone might have input on.
Technical SEO | | ColeBField12210 -
301 Redirect keep html files on server?
Hello just one quick question which came up in the discussion here: http://moz.com/community/q/take-a-good-amount-of-existing-landing-pages-offline-because-of-low-traffic-cannibalism-and-thin-content When I do 301 redirects where I put together content from 2 pages, should I keep the page/html which redirects on the server? Or should I delete? Or does it make no difference at all?
Technical SEO | | _Heiko_0 -
Switching forum software - 301 redirects?
Hi everyone I'm working on a successful Wordpress site that also has a forum attached. The forum currently uses YAF forum software, which requires Windows hosting. The site owner wants to switch to Linux hosting. This is not a problem for WP, but it does mean that we'll need to transfer the forum to Xenforo or something similar that runs on Linux. We're OK with the technical side of this, but we're worried about the SEO implications. The URL for every forum post (more than 50,000 of them) is going to change during this transfer. It seems completely impractical to 301 each of those, so should I just 301 the URLs that have inbound links? Also, what is google's algo going to think when we suddenly have ~50,000 404s? Many thanks in advance! J
Technical SEO | | van280 -
301 redirect blog posts from old URL to new one
I moved a wordpress blog from domain.com to domain.com/blog . I want to redirect the links in google from the old domain.com to the new one, but I also want to put a new site/application at domain.com..so I'm thinking an .htaccess 301 redirect at the root wouldn't work. Any tips?
Technical SEO | | callmeed0 -
What would happen if 301 redirects were not in place
Good Morning from 14 degrees C sunny Wetherby UK 🙂 My question is please.... "When a new site is given a total makover ie old urls are re written to radically different ones I know if you dont set up 301 redirects the infamous 404 error page will rear its head. But i wonder if 301 redirects were not configured how long on average does it take google to index the new site and serp links finally point to the new site". Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
301 redirect domain to page on another domain
Hi, If I wanted to do a 301 permanent redirect on a domain to a page on another domain will this cause any problems? Lets say I have 4 domains (all indexed with content), I decide to create a new domain with 4 pages, one for each domain. I copy the content from the old domains to the relevant page on the new domain and set it live. At the same time as setting the new site live I do a 301 permanent redirect on the 4 domains to the relevant pages on the new domain. What happens if Google indexes the new site before visiting the redirected domains, could this cause a duplicate content penalty? Cheers
Technical SEO | | activitysuper0 -
How to show a 'We are now...' message for a rebrand and do a 301 redirect?
Our developer wants to use javascript, document referral or adding a URL parameter, in order to show a modal window telling them 'We are now...'. A cookie seems to be too much work. All of which don't play nice with the search engines. Do you know of a technique or method that allows us to be SEO friendly and still give a good user experience? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Pawngo0 -
301 Redirect?
Sometimes I want to redirect pages on my site. Like a search result: http://www.inthelighturns.com/memorials/catalogsearch/result/?q=hearts to a page designed for what they're searching for: http://www.inthelighturns.com/hearts.html There's no real worry about transferring page rank and this may not be a permanent redirect. Just a "I want this page to show this page for some time" kind of redirect. What's the best solution? Thanks Tyler
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0