Sphinn - How Google handles 301 Permanent Redirects

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How Google handles 301 Permanent Redirects

Went Hot: March 5, 2008 - 10:45 am
Posted By: northrock 489 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.strategicmarketingmontreal.ca)
Category: Google SEO

The interesting note here is that both the old URL and the new URL are showing in the SERPs. See the details of what Barry found in redirecting his site.

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from bwelford 489 days ago #

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Thanks for sphinning this, Chris. The more intriguing thing is that, despite the 301 permanent redirect, both the old URL and the new URL show in the SERPs. The redirect was put in place 6 days ago. My working hypothesis is that the old one is not de-indexed but eventually will sink without trace.

from northrock 489 days ago #

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Very interesting find Barry. Thanks for sharing!

from SpostareDuro 489 days ago #

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Thanks Barry..Easy on the eyes..Good information. *-)

from g1smd 488 days ago #

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*** The more intriguing thing is that, despite the 301 permanent redirect, both the old URL and the new URL show in the SERPs. ***

The old URL will take up to a year to drop out (though that time scale seems to be reducing with each new Google advance). It will likely languish in Supplemental for most of that time. That is NOT a problem, as your on-site redirect will deliver the visitor to the correct content at the correct URL anyway.

I covered this topic in great depth over at webmasterworld a couple of years ago if you want some more detail as to how it appears to work.

from g1smd 488 days ago #

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You're correct that the cache date for the "old" URL is now frozen at the last date content was directly recoverable from the old URL. The old URL will hang around for quite a while longer after Google "sees" the 301 redirect is in place. That is not a problem.

One major error that some people make when using redirects to fix canonicalisation issues, is to not update the URLs seen in the internal links of their site. That can cause major issues. never let people click through a redirrect while they are browsing your site by following internal navigation links..

from bwelford 488 days ago #

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That's very interesting, g1smd. That would imply that they keep a URL in their index but never spider it. I thought that even for URLs in the Supplemental Index, they spidered very occasionally. To all intents and purposes, the URL is completely dead, particularly in the mind of the creator. What is the logic for Google not dropping it after a short delay?