301 Redirection More Than Once - Will It Pass PR?

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by AzureHaze, Dec 22, 2009.

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  1. #1
    Summary:
    Full Story:

    As far as I know, a 301 redirect (using .htaccess) is able to pass PR/link juice from an old page to its new page.

    If I have inactive pages with PR and backlinks intact, and I do a 301 redirection from those pages to my homepage/root, the link juice will be transferred to the homepage (many have said yes to this so I suppose this is true).

    Now I'm including the following lines into my .htaccess file which basically changes pages with .php extension into extensionless pages (without .php) e.g. http://www.domain.com/contact.php will be 301 redirected to http://www.domain.com/contact
    Suppose http://domain.com/contact.php has PR4 and I did a 301 redirection to root (thus the following line will be included in .htaccess):
    Having both commands in the .htaccess file, the redirection actually goes like this:
    » HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently From http://domain.com/contact.php To http://domain.com/contact
    » HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently From http://domain.com/contact To http://domain.com/
    » HTTP/1.1 200 OK

    So, will the PR/link juice of http://domain.com/contact.php be passed to http://domain.com/?
     
    AzureHaze, Dec 22, 2009 IP
  2. Canonical

    Canonical Well-Known Member

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    #2
    It depends... on the search engine. Google is pretty good about following "stacked" redirects like you are describing. Other engines are not. Some will follow only one 301.

    You should be aware, many SEOs believe that with each redirect you actually lose a little link juice... common estimates say 10-20% per redirect.

    The best practice is to avoid stacked redirects. In other words, rather than having:

    simply unstack them as follows:

    This is much cleaner. All search engines should be able to handle a single 301 redirect. And IF there is any truth to the theory that link juice is lost with each 301 then you have minimized any link juice lost.

    PS: If you have general rules like:

    that you want executed for most page requests but have specific rules that you want to handle differently simply put the specific rules first in your .htaccess and put the general rules at the end like:

     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2009
    Canonical, Dec 22, 2009 IP
  3. John peterr

    John peterr Peon

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    #3
    Hi,
    very interesting question, but to my knowledge i had analyzed it and came to conclusion that the PR juice from Page A to domain.com will pass
     
    John peterr, Dec 22, 2009 IP
  4. alex_cristo

    alex_cristo Peon

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    #4
    Exactly, It will pass but takes time to regain earlier PR and ranking but takes time depending on size of site.
     
    alex_cristo, Dec 22, 2009 IP
  5. AzureHaze

    AzureHaze Peon

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    #5
    Thanks everyone for the clarification and Canonical for the great advice on .htaccess, really appreciate your help, everyone.
     
    AzureHaze, Dec 22, 2009 IP