Let's say I have an established website on domain A. After a while I grab a new domain name B, that I think would best suit my niche, so I decide to do a 301 redirect from domain A to domain B. Of course, the pagerank will be transfered to the new domain B, the visitors will also be redirected, so everyone will be happy. But what happens when domain A expires? Will I lose the PR of domain B? Should the redirection last for a longer period of time before I could let domain A expire? If anyone tried this before, please share. Thanks.
I don't think it will affect site B. It's like pouring the contents of one glass into another. The only problem is that all of the aged links for site A would then be pointing nowhere if the site is gone, so you'd lose out on the redirects of that site.
Yes this is correct, search engine update their indexes when they find 301 redirect (that's why it's called moved Permanently) so they transfer the page rank to the new domain, I don't think anything will happen when the old one expires. Another proof is 301 redirect is the recommended method used with the DELETED pages or RENAMED pages. Deleted means they no longer exist the same like expired domains.
It is not the same thing. Even if a page is deleted, the .htaccess that redirects the visitors from the deleted one to the new one will remain on the server. If a domain expires, you won't have the .htaccess file to tell the browser that the site moved permanently from that domain. That is why I have my doubts about the pagerank transfer from an expired domain name.
PageRank comes from backlinks. If you let domain A expire, the PR from backlinks to Domain A will no longer transfer unless the backlink is updated to point directly to the new domain.
It sounds fair to me, but I was hoping Google could somehow preserve PR when a domain expires. Does anyone know an official position on this matter? Did Matt Cutts ever blogged about it, or some Google representative?
There is a huge business in reregistering expired/dropped domains that have existing backlinks for the sole purpose of PR. What happens when someone registers the domain?- is google supposed to keep track of the older backlinks and credit them to a new site and keep newer backlinks to the renewed domain? If you want to keep the backlinks, you need to keep the domain - I'm positive of this.
keep it until you sure that all PR transferred to your new domain. After Redirecting watch the PR update. After the update you will get a pretty good idea of whether PR juice Transfer or not. And remember that 301 redirect not Transfer all PR Juice to new domain.
A 301 redirect is permanent. Once a spider sees this, the index will be updated accordingly. Therefore as soon as you are certain that Google has acknowledged your 301 redirects they can (in theory) be removed. - Matt
a 301 redirect is only permanent so long as you control the domain. If it expires and gets picked up by someone else then the 301 redirect can be undone.
Wow! This post wins the bunny prize... it has the most misquoted information that I have ever seen on any post in my life.... But keep on trying... I think google says the honor a PERMANENT 301 Redirect since they update thier directories and they are permanent... I will look up the Google post on Best Practices for Site Transfers and add it here... back in a little while... Google does recommmend keeping the old site 301 in place for about 6 months to ensure all directories are updated and you can also watch for a de-indexing of the old page on the old site... same in a full site transfer.. your old site will de-index one by one as google finds and logs the 301 permanent transfer... PERMANENT means like a long time.... FOREVER.... and they do transfer the backlinks also... otherwise they will not transfer the google juice..
No, now you should keep an eye on this. Once you get the traffic coming to your site from the previous one, Google will keep a note of this. And then the old site will not show up in the search results.