Hey I'm trying to transfer a PR3 folder on my site, but its not working. In this case I am trying to transfer http://anothera.net/v3 (PR3) to http://www.anothera.net/v2 (PR2) cause I wanted to downgrade a version of my site. its been months since I added this to my Htaccess redirectMatch 301 ^/v3(.*)$ http://www.anothera.net Yet google still hasnt transfered the PR, any suggestions? Thanks.
this very topic has been debated on many forums before. The 301 redirect will not pass all of your PageRank and Mr. Matt Cutts has stated this just recently. The ideal way to do this would be to retain the old URL.
yeah you are going to only be able to carry the PR by keeping the old domain name. That is where google has placed its weight
Google will transfer PR across domains as long as the redirects are 301 redirects. There IS some PR loss but it is roughly 10-15% (whatever Google has the damping or decay factor set to in their PR formula at the moment) which shouldn't be "that" significant. If your goal is to transfer PR from URLs whose path start with /v3 to their equivalent URLs under /v2 on the same domain then your RedirectMatch statement is incorrect. redirectMatch 301 ^/v3(.*)$ http://www.anothera.net tells the search engines to 301 redirect all requests for pages whose paths start with /v3 (i.e. /v3*) to the home page http://www.anothera.net. I believe you want something like: redirectMatch 301 ^/v3(.*)$ http://www.anothera.net/v2$1 instead.
Exactly, your redirection instruction right now redirecting all /v3 pages to home page so that link value right now being passed through your home page. If you wish it to be transferred through /v2 then correct the instruction as mentioned in above post. However, Matt Cutts has stated that in case of 301 all PT doesn't pass to redirected URL, some PR may loss.