301 redirect dropped page rank
-
Hi,
We have a www domain that I have changed to a non www domain. The www domain had been in place for some time and had a good page rank, PR4.
After this change the page rank dropped significantly (PR0, and now recently back to PR2) despite it being a 301 redirect which I thought "should" carry over the page rank.
Yes, I am aware I should have just left it be. Hind sight 20/20 .. ya ya ya
My questions
- Is the 301 the correct method for this?
- Why did the page rank drop despite the 301?
- Should we go back to the www domain at this point?
Thanks
Kris
-
Hi Kris,
Google's public position on the use of 301 redirects is that it will preserve almost all of the link juice from the old page and pass it to the new. This Google webmaster video from Matt Cutts was uploaded in April of this year and is fairly clear on that.
However, we need to remember that PageRank is basically a measure of the number and quality of links to your site. There is a detailed explanation here.
So, it may be that there has been some change in the the sites that link to yours between PR updates. You can use SEOmoz tools to conduct a little CSI on the sites and check this if you want to.
First, find the sites that are linking to yours in Open Site Explorer. Export the Report to csv to grab the list of sites and open it up in Excel. You can then use the SEOmoz Historical PageRank Tool to check whether there has been any significant change in the PR of the sites linking to you. If you find some, there is your answer.
If you do not find any significant changes...then perhaps the reversal of the redirect has triggered some of that recalculation described in the PR article -and since it is coming back...
On the subject of there being some mis-match issue in Google's Index between the non www root domain and the www subdomain, there is one thing that occurs to me.
Is it possible that you have changed the 301 redirect, but still have an instruction existing in Google Webmaster Tools which is telling Google that your primary domain is the www? This could create some confusion for Googlebot and perhaps influence Google's view of how "friendly" your site is. It shouldn't really affect PageRank, but could affect rankings.
Since it hasn't made any difference to your traffic, I would not be too worried, but would probably take a look at the link profile and see if there is a need to work on attracting more or better links for the site.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Hi Sha,
Thanks for your reply!
I checked in to the visits on the site as they have remained fairly consistent from the months prior. I understand the PR toolbar is not updated regularly, and that PR has limited value in the grand scheme of things. My concern is largely on the PR as is the most visible factor at the moment, based on that the 301 redirect "should" have maintained most(?) of the PR with out disruption.
It is just very odd that this would happen with in days of the change, the content has not changed drastically.... this is going to sound like a stretch but, is it possible Google has attributed my root domain against the sub-domain as duplicate content in it's cache regardless of the 301 redirect?
I am just trying to understand the problem, if it really is one, and if there is any good solutions apart from just waiting it out and rebuilding on what we currently have in place now. Everything I have changed was in accordance to the way it "should" be according to Google and the internet at large...
Thanks!
-
Hi Kris,
An alarm bell rang for me when you mentioned that your focus here is on the effect upon PageRank. You should be very careful in attributing the change in Pagerank to the implementation of the 301 as Toolbar PageRank is updated infrequently and in a very ad hoc fashion. This means that there may have been other things which occurred over the period between PageRank updates which were responsible for the change.
Rand gave a very good explanation of the vagaries of PageRank and the differences between the two types of PageRank in this Whiteboard Friday recently - What is Google's PageRank Good For?
Given the changes that have occurred recently in the world of search, I would be looking fairly carefully at the possibility that some of those changes may be responsible for any negative impacts on the site. Also, has there been a negative impact on traffic and/or rankings? These things are really much more important than PR.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Hi Wayne,
I am currently using mod_rewrite to rewrite the sub-domain to the root domain. Is the 301 not a permanent redirect?
Also mod_rewrite can pass a header(301) with the redirect of the domain, which from what I understand "should" have told Google, etc.. that the site is now moved permanently.
What header should be used for the redirect?Prior to me changing the www domain to a non www domain it was reversed and going the other direction... non www domain redirect to the www domain.
Rearding the Canonicalitzation, I have additional rewrite rules to combat duplicate content issues such as index.php rewritten to / and so on and so forth... as well as the sub-domain to root domain rewrites
Thanks!
-
You may be suffering from Canonicalitzation. There's a post about it here http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
You should use mod rewrite to redirect a subdomain to the root domain, not 301. I would remove the 301 and with time your position should be restored.
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
-
How effective are 301 redirects in passing page rank?
I have a blog which is ranking well for certain terms, and would like to repurpose it to better explain these terms it is ranking for, including updating the url to the new term the blog will be about. The plan being to 301 redirect the old url to new. In the past, I've done this with other pages, and have actually lost much of the rankings that I had earned on the original URL. What is your take on this? Maybe repurpose blog, but maintain original URL just to be on the safe side? Thanks
Technical SEO | | CitimarineMoz0 -
Does Page speed matter for google ranking?
We are not sure that page does matter or not for google ranking as I am working for this keyword "flower delivery in Bangalore" from last few months and I saw some website's google first page who have low page speed but still ranking so I am really worried about my page that has also low page speed. will my Bangalore page rank on google the first page if the speed is low and kindly suggest me more tips for the ranking best factors which really works in 2020 and one more thing that domain authority really matters in this year? as I also saw some websites with low domain authority and ranking on google's first page. Home page: Flowerportal Bangalore page: https://flowerportal.in/flower-delivery/bangalore/ focus Keyword is: Flower delivery in Bangalore, send flowers to Bangalore
Technical SEO | | vidi34231 -
301 redirected all my pages to my new domain, now I have a problem with Google Search Console
Hi guys! I bought a new domain name and redirected all my URLs from the old domain to the new one. Everything worked perfectly but now I have a little problem. I want to use the option 'Address Change' in google search console. Step 1 Works (Select new website in the list) Step 2 Works (Confirm that the 301 are working) Step 3 Asks me to Verify the old domain (huh!?) in order to complete the request. Obviously that doesn't work because my 301s WORKS! So if I try to verify the old website by putting a google file in the root of my domain Google tries to access it and it automatically redirects to the new domain. I must be missing something lol help!
Technical SEO | | benoit_20180 -
301 redirect with Magento; still Page authority 0 after 6 weeks
Hi Mozzers! In December '14 I have execute a 301 redirect in the 'old' page in the admin of my Magento store. Now I was surprised to see that the Page Authority is still 0 of the new page 6 weeks after the execution. should I have seen the update of the PA on the new page already after 6 weeks of time? If yes, then I assume that my Magento didn't execute this properly? Old url: http://hippemamashop.nl/mama/boeken/fotoalbum.html
Technical SEO | | aznventure
New page: you will be redirected to the new page after clicking the old page Mm4uBEl0 -
301 redirect .htaccess
Hi guys I am working on some 301 redirects on an apache webserver and I'd like a bit of assistance in trying to get a specific type result: I want all addresses from domaina.com to be redirected to domainb.com in the same structure so domaina.com/folder/file will go to domainb.com/folder/file expect for 2 folders.
Technical SEO | | seobackbone
ie: DomainA.com --> DomainB.com
except domainA.com/folder1
and domainB.com/folder2 Can someone let me know how I can pull this off?0 -
Redirection based on country and impact on rankings
I have a website that ranks number 1 in google.co.uk for its main key term and ranks number 4 in google.com.au. However i would rather that visitors in australia see domain.com.au rather than domain.co.uk. Is there a way to achieve this using some clever 301s without impacting the rankings in australia and so that the .com.au starts to rank in place of the .co.uk OR Would you advise launching a .com.au version of the site hosted separately with unique / re-written content on it.?
Technical SEO | | thefresh0 -
Google India Rankings Drop Suddenly
Keyword: indian wedding planner page:www.hukamievent.com/indian-wedding-planner.php It didn't drop, it just disappeared. No, I didn't do anything to be penalized at all and I am still in there index. I know this question has been asked many times here, while I apply all the suggestions given to other people with similar problem, here's a quick question I need to ask, I made following changes recently, could either of these be the reason for ranking decline? In google webmasters' tools, I had changed geographic target from - india, to- nothing, few weeks ago. could this be the reason. Around 2 weeks ago I paid someone to submit articles to 500 article directories, same article spun many times, he did the job in around 6 days and got back to me with a list of around 150 submissions with as many backlinks, all with same anchor text, "indian wedding planner", one of my targeted keywords. Before the submissions I was on page 9, yes that was nine, and just after the submission I was at page 2 position 1, within a matter few days. I saw my the targeted page improve in ranking and jump on to page one position 10, for a short while, before it disappeared. is this something they call "google dance"? My website is fluctuating on google SERP for many other keywords too, in most cases, my ranking fell. P.S.:With the same keyword,"indian wedding planner" my rankings in google US improved, I am on position 6 page 1. please enlighten fellow mozzers!
Technical SEO | | virtualhandshake0 -
Is this a safe 301 redirect?
We are moving our site from one platform to another. Currently on our site we have two homepages. "www.homepage.com" and "www.homepage.com/Index" Both pages have some high quality links pointing in on them. The problem: We are going to be doing a 301 redirect from "www.homepage.com/Index" page to "www.homepage.com" as we are moving platforms at this time we weren't going to create a "www.homepage.com/Index" page all. This leaves this page as an empty URL. With this webpage disappearing all together will we lose traction as we are redirecting an empty URL? Or is it better to recreate this "www.homepage.com/Index" on our new platform redirect it and wait for google to deIndex this page for us? As well is there a tutorial for how to implement 301 redirects or is this something worth looking for a developer and pay someone to do?
Technical SEO | | HCGDiet0