Should you ever reverse a 301
-
Hi
Im Looking at reversing a 301 i did 5 months ago, I originally changed names of a site for reasons where the site was going to be split into 2 where part of the site i would run and the other where i would get my business partner to run it
However since the 301 i have lost 80% of traffic and cannot find the reason as to what especially as everything looks perfect except the rankings, to put it into context 150 keywords i was tracking all were page 5 and below with 40% being page 1
Now only 7 from that same 150 are in the top 10 pages (First 100 results), The issue i have must be very rare as i have posted for help with little or no response, which tells me that the kind people who have looked could not see any issues as this is normally a very helpful community (below is the last thread i asked for help)
http://www.seomoz.org/q/301-redirect-how-to-get-those-juices-flowing
So 5 months on i am considering removing the 301 and hoping that some kind of normality returns by reinstating the old URL
So my question is that is what im about to do wise, do i have any options, is this something you have done in the past if so how did you get on
Thanks in advance
-
Please keep us updated
-
I am really tempted to revert back, but i have had some extremely busy bot activity since i turned on those internal URLs for a few days as posted by
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/uncrawled-301s-a-quick-fix-for-when-relaunches-go-too-well
Although this image says humans they seem to be bots, the blue is current and the red line is last month so something is going on but not sure yet
Ill await another week then make a decision
Many thanks for taking the time to respond,
-
Yeah and I guess if it was a penalty you would have received an email - Google is being all transparent now. This is an odd situation you have. maybe you should kill the 301 just to see if the old site shoots back up. Weird, my friend... very weird. I wish I could be of any assistance but I have never seen this before. Good luck.
-
@ Billy
Thank you for responding
The link profile is not good in fact i have not linked to this new site that much as i wanted to see where i was before i embarked on a strategic plan of action, because i did not get much time i employed a third party to start a facebook and social media for me opposed to the linking however they thought they were doing me a favour by added random links.
I have many more than what you can see but most i have removed, i reported those to Google and showed them what i have done and they confirmed there was no manual penalty holding me back (no manual actions)
but i thought the 301 should push most of the link juice over from the old and that has not happened
I may just have to face facts that the 301 is not going to pass the juice over
but what my real question is why and where is the PR from the home page, there has to be an issue because the PR has gone to many inner pages but not the home
I thought like you did that im caught up in an algorithmic penalty but that wont pull PR from the home page and let inner pages have their page rank
-
Is it possible that the 301s actually don't have much to do with it? Or perhaps that doing this drew algorithmic attention to the website? In going over your website I, like others before me, couldn't find any reason for you to get knocked back so then I ran your site (the new one) through open site explorer and it seems the majority of your links are blog comments and most of those are on blogs that are in genres unrelated to what you do. It could just be that Google isn't giving you the credit for these links that they used to. Just a thought.
-
Thanks
Done pretty much everything i can think of.
the content is identical to the old site as i just changed names everything else including site structure is identical, the old site is totally removed from the Index (which only finished around 3 weeks ago (17k page site)
Had many of links changed over .. PR has updated many of the inner pages but the home page is still a PR1, down From a 4 and if you copy text from any of the pages it wont show in Google search
This to me says i have an issue, but what that issue is i do not know, i had a problem a few years back where i missed the Http:// from an internal link and somehow Google had interpreted that as a 301, i fixed that and PR and rankings returned within 48 hours. this seems awfully similar and checking for this throws up nothing.
Also open site explorer still has the old site at a PA of 60 my new url at 42 with hardly any of the links moving over, so its just not Google slow or cannot read the 301 correctly
Header responses are what they should be so little lost on this one
Ill give it to the next Link update which is the 11th and if not much else changed then ill remove the 301, but i was hoping there was something stopping me from ranking opposed to just bad luck
-
Have you done any similar link building to the new url?
Is the new url 100% clean? Is the content and intent the same or very similar?I've had similar experience where the 301 seemed to drop rank and make things worse, especially when the content doesn't match exactly. I've removed/reversed with good results, and I've also let a few incubate longer (with more link building) with good results.
If you've made an effort to build similar links, and even get some of the old links changed to point the new url and the ranking still doesn't come back - i'd remove the 301 and see what happens.
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 broken - problems - please help!
Hi, I have a bit of an issue... Around a year ago we launched a new company. This company was launched out of a trading style of another company owned by our parent group (the trading style no longer exists). We used a lot of the content from the old trading style website, carefully mapping page-to-page 301 redirects, using the change of address tool in webmaster tools and generally did a good job of it. The reason I know we did a good job is that although we lost some traffic in the month we rebranded, we didn't lose rankings. We have since gained traffic exponentially and have managed to increase our organic traffic by over 200% over the last year. All well and good. However, a mistake has recently occurred whereby the old trading style website domain was deleted from the server for a period of around 2-3 weeks. It has since been reinstated. Since then, although we haven't lost rankings for the keywords we track I can see in webmaster tools that a number of our pages have been deindexed (around 100+). It has been suggested that we put the old homepage back up, and include a link to the XML sitemap to get Google to recrawl the old URLs and reinstate our 301 redirects. I'm OK with this (up to a point - personally I don't think it's an elegant solution) however I always thought you didn't need a link to the xml sitemap from the website and that the crawlers should just find it? Our current plan is not to put the homepage up exactly as it was (I don't believe this would make good business sense given that the company no longer exists), but to make it live with an explanation that the website has moved to a different domain with a big old button pointing to the new site. I'm wondering if we also need a button to the xml sitemap or not? I know I can put a sitemap link in the robots file, but I wonder if that would be enough for Google to find it? Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Multiple 301 Redirects on the same domain name
Hi, I'd appreciate some advice ont he below. I have a website, say www.site.co.uk that has just been redesigned using a new CMS. Previously it had URLs in the format /article.php?id=123, the new site has more friendly urls in the format /articles/article-slug. I have been able to import the old articles into my CMS using the same article IDs and I have created a unique slug for each post. So now in my database, I have the article id (from the querystring) and a slug. However, I have hundreds of old URLs indexed by Google in the format /article.php?id=123 and need to redirect these. My plan was to do the following. 301 Redirect /article.php?id=123 to an intermediate page, in this case /redirect/123. On this intermediate page I would do a database lookup for the article slug, based on the ID from the querystring, create a new URL and perform a second 301 redirect to my new URL E.g. /articles/article-slug-from-database. Whilst this works and keeps the site usable for visitors the two 301 redirects do worry me, as I don;t want Google indexing lots of /redirect/[article id] urls. The other solution is to generate hundreds of htaccess redirect rules that map old url to the new url. The first solution is much cleaner, but the two 301's worry me. Will Google work this out on it's own, is there a better way? Any advice is much appreciated. Cheers Rob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AmyCrompton1 -
301 Redirect pages with .aspx extension
I want 301 redirect all a website's subpages with a .aspx extension to a page without the .aspx etension. Example: I want to 301 redirect www.website.com/services.aspx to www.website.com/services Right now if you do not include .aspx on the end of every URL it gives a 404 error. I have used the web.config file to 301 redirect non-www to www and /default.aspx to /. I am not extremely familiar with IIS 7.0 or web.config, so any help would be great. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VentaMarketing0 -
How to handle the 301 of a complete domain on URL level
We will be shutting down an old website with many (good) links, since the site has no strategic relevance anymore. We do have many other sites, but none of them has exactly the same content/topic. Nonetheless, I would like to keep the juice and redirect the site to another newer project. However, I want to redirect certain URLs of the old site to probably even different domains, depending on which content matches best with the alternative newer site. Does this make sense? Or would youjust redirect the whole domain to one other domain although they don't really have the same topic And how would you handle the URL redirects if the old site has more than 50k URLs? Because that is the case. Thanks for any advice
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Windex0 -
301 redirect Actinic HTML pages to ASP. Achievable?
Hi - I'm hoping someone can help me resolve an issue in relation to setting up 301 redirects. The client to whom I provide SEO services is being told by his developers that setting up 301 redirects is not achievable from old HTML pages to his new site running on a Windows server. My feeling is that it should be fine, and I have found documentation online that seems to support this, however I'm no developer, certainly no server admin, so I was wondering if anyone could advise me? Is it feasible to set up 301 redirects from Actinic sites (HTML pages) to a new site in NOP commerce running on a Windows server (ASP pages). Thank you for your help! Iain
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wynyard0 -
Should i continue linking the old page after a redirect 301?
hi everybody, i'm trying to understand why my page http://poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it isn't ranked for the keyword poltrona frau brescia even if is indexed on google. the page gets authority and traffic from the page www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.html that is already ranked in fourth position for that keyword. should i continue linking the previous or the new page to increase the page authority? i don't know if is a good way to link a page not ranked despite a ranked one.. Please help me.... thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0 -
Problem w/ 301 Redirect
Here is how I did the configuration of the redirects: I don’t understand why the destination page is different from the one is configured in the apache server. Any ideas? For example: http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/entertainment/ is being already being 301 redirected to a 404 page (http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.htmlentertainment/) that does not exist on the Apache server. As you can see, the url was incorrectly written. Another occurrence from the spreadsheet is http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/spanish/gallery/beach.html, which is also being 301 redirected to a 404 page (http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.htmlgallery/beach.html). This is causing a hard 404 page. Here is my .httpaccess file: <virtualhost 192.168.200.25:80=""></virtualhost> ServerAdmin ecommerce@sol-group.com DocumentRoot /home/www/solgroup/americas/meliacaribetropical.com ServerName www.meliacaribetropical.com ServerAlias meliacaribetropical.com Redirect permanent /spanish/services/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/services.html Redirect permanent /entertainment/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/services.html Redirect permanent /press/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/restaurantes/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html Redirect permanent /spanish/entertainment/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html Redirect permanent /spanish/services/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html Redirect permanent /es/spa/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html Redirect permanent /spanish/accommodations/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/habitaciones.html Redirect permanent /spanish/spa/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicios.html Redirect permanent /spanish/royal/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/servicio-real.html Redirect permanent /spanish/dining/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html Redirect permanent /spanish/flintstones/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/galeria/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/visor.html Redirect permanent /spanish/gallery/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/visor.html Redirect permanent /es/reuniones-eventos/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/grupos.html Redirect permanent /lowest-rate.php http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /es/los-picapiedra/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /gallery/beach.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /gallery/dining.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/gastronomy.html Redirect permanent /gallery/pools.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/sitemap.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/galeria/playa.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/galeria/restaurantes.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html Redirect permanent /es/galeria/piscinas.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/prensa/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/gallery/beach.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/gallery/pools.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/gallery/dining.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/gastronomia.html Redirect permanent /spanish/press/ http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /en/groups.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/groups.html Redirect permanent /terms-condition.php http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /es/all_inclusive.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/terms-condition.php http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/prensa/family-facilities-amenities.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/outside-us-telephone-listing.php http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /es/prensa/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /press/family-facilities-amenities.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /press/melia-international-brand-overhaul.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html Redirect permanent /es/prensa/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /spanish/press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/es/index.html Redirect permanent /press/melia-caribe-tropical-announces-fall-promotion.html http://www.meliacaribetropical.com/en/index.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Melia0 -
Setting up of 301 redirects
Good morning all, As part of the analysis of our website, we have realised that we are diluting our keyword strength in a particular area by having multiple zones all targeting the same keyword. We have decided to combine these zones into one, and set up 301 redirects so that the remaining zone gets the benefit of the other zones' link juice. When setting up a 301 redirect from zone "X" to zone "Y" say, do I need to keep all of the content in zone X, or should I remove all content before the redirect is set up? Does zone Y still get the benefit of zone X's link juice if the content is removed? Many thanks Guy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Horizon0