Can 301 redirects that are inaccurate cause Google suppressions on rankings?

[QubaSEO]

In an interesting study by DeganSEO titled 'Negative Impact of 301 Redirects - A Case Study' a drop of rankings was observed when popular blog posts were redirected to product pages. One hypothesis is that the suppression is due to topical difference between the redirected pages (blog posts) and the target page.

The topical difference issue is an interesting one when you consider it in the context of website migrations. We always recommend that 301 redirects are done at a page level and that if an equivalent page doesn't exist to just 301 anyway but to the most logical page. If you think about it Google are likely to frown on this because

a) it's not a good experience for the user - 404 would be more accurate for them
b) it's lazy - if you have good content that has gained authority/trust then create the same content on the new site don't trytp pass that to an entirely different page.

Thoughts? Experiences?

[evolvingSEO]

I see what you're getting at. This wasn't a "normal" redirect old page to new page situation. The page being redirected to existed all along, and then they decided to 301 pages to it that were not related topically or by page type. The page with redirects pointed at it dropped in ranking.

I suspect the redirects through off the topical understand of what the commercial page was "about".

It's a fascinating SEO test - but hopefully not something anyone would do for real. Rules of thumb:

• Try to get your URLs right from the very beginning
• Try not not change them unless you have to after the fact
• Definitely don't redirect from one page to another unless the content is an exact match (or really close) and don't redirect across page types (commercial to informational, vice versa etc)

[QubaSEO]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for weighing in on this! Appreciated.

Judging by Dejan's study I was actually using suppression to mean a penalty of some sort as that's what it looks like on the pages that had the redirects pointed at them.

Why would the pages with the redirects pointed at them drop? Even if Google chose not to pass the signals through because of a lack of topical relavancy they have not lost any signals, just not gained any....?

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Quba SEO

Josh's answer is pretty solid - and just want to be sure the word "suppression" is not being used as "penalty" (algorithmic or manual).

Suppression definitely happens with generally all redirects because the redirect is like adding a middle link between the two pages. PageRank and other signals gets diluted when passing through a middle page.

And yes, if the content does not match and Google picks up on that, they won't pass your signals through the redirects either.

I'm not surprised to hear of Dejan's results at all, and as Josh says be very careful with URL changes of any kind. I used to advise clients to improve URLs, but lately (especially if the URL has equity and traffic) I'm shying away from that more and more.