When is it safe to remove 301 redirects?

[danielshaw]

I have created over 500 301 redirects in my .htaccess file, some of them are more than 2 years old now. Should I delete them? I don't like seeing the "notices" number in crawl diagnostics so high

[ShaMenz]

Hi again Daniel,

Notices are nothing to worry about - if you take a look at the message from Roger and the Mozzers above the blue tabs in the Notices section, you will see a little explanation:

"Notices are interesting facts about your pages we found while crawling."

They are just there to make you aware of things in the background that might not be obvious

You will find a short explanation on each of the other sections too.

Incidentally, lots of 302's is not such a good thing - which is why they are in the "Warnings" section instead of the "Notices.

Another little thing to be aware of is the tiny blue "Help" link toward the top right of each page in the Pro Tool. Whichever page you are on, this link will take you to the help documentation for that particular feature. Some good stuff in there and a great way to get to know the tools when you are starting out.

If you have questions about your campaigns, you can also email the Help Team direct - help at seomoz.org. It's worth it just to see the awesome thankyou video when you answer the feedback survey!...or register for the weekly Welcome Webinar with Moz staff.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[danielshaw]

Is it possible that the high level of 301's affect my MOZ trust raking or Google Ranking at all? Each time I work on the "errors" section in SEOmoz, the "notices" section keeps on rising...

[danielshaw]

Any ideas of what would be a potential solution?

[ShaMenz]

Hi Daniel,

I have to say I really don't agree with the idea of deleting 301's after a period of time. The only place where there is a time frame involved in the 301 scenario is at the Search engines.

Links can come from any number of other sources including links from other sites, browser bookmarks, links passed in emails, pdf documents, embedded in Youtube videos ...to name just a few.

If the 301's were originally placed to fix the problem of broken links, why would I want to "unfix" them?

Even for large sites with a lot of 301's there are ways to manage processing load etc and if you have found a solution that is acceptable for a period of time, the same solution should be acceptable over the longer term.

Hope that helps,

Sha

[RankSurge]

Are the 301's for old urls on the existing domain that now point to a new one? Or are they from an old (or expired) domain that you are looking to pass along that value?

If it's an old or expired domain, you should be able to remove the 301 after 90 days.

If everything is still on the same server, you should keep them intact. 500 re-directs isn't a tremendous amount.

I work with some enterprise level clients that have millions of 301's in place.

Hope this helps!

[NakulGoyal]

I would ask the following question:

Regarding those 500 redirects: Do you have external sites linking to any of those 500 pages ?
I would at-least identify pages that have external links and keep them if possible.

[Devin_Anderson]

Only as soon as you've found another way to solve the problem that the 301s were the solution to.