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301 Redirect Gone Wrong?

by etvconnect
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello

Suppose I have an old 301 redirect which points DOMAIN A towards DOMAIN B.
Since a few days, I obtained a great domain name (DOMAIN C) and decided to break up the old 301 redirect and point DOMAIN A and DOMAIN B seperately to DOMAIN C.

I did this a three days ago and all my rankings (which were quite good) have suddenly disappeared.

What is happening? Can't Google handle this?


Kind Regards
#301 #redirect #wrong
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Originally Posted by etvconnect View Post

    Hello

    Suppose I have an old 301 redirect which points DOMAIN A towards DOMAIN B.
    Since a few days, I obtained a great domain name (DOMAIN C) and decided to break up the old 301 redirect and point DOMAIN A and DOMAIN B seperately to DOMAIN C.

    I did this a three days ago and all my rankings (which were quite good) have suddenly disappeared.

    What is happening? Can't Google handle this?


    Kind Regards
    It's pretty normal to lose rankings for awhile when you 301 to a new site. Takes Google some time to crawl all the URLs, see the 301's, and crawl the new site.
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    • Profile picture of the author etvconnect
      but I broke up an older redirect so that the two previous domain would be pointing seperately to my new domain. I really don't want to start from scratch, I'm talking about more then 10000 backlinks so eventually I must rank.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Nobody said you have to start from scratch. It just may take a few days to a week or two before Google starts to recognize the 301.
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  • Profile picture of the author TheContentAuthority
    Etvconnect,

    When you say rankings, do you mean your position in SERP’s or your PageRank?

    First off, 301 redirects in terms of traffic are seamless for users so you should not have lost any traffic unless you did the redirect incorrectly. If you were expecting the new domain to have the same PageRank or the same rankings in SERP’s as domains A and B, this will not happen. 301 redirects only pass on a small portion of link authority to domains they are redirected to.

    So in a nutshell, you should not have lost any traffic even for a second. Your old domains A and B should maintain their PR and position in SERP’s and the only real benefit domain C should receive is a portion of domain authority and all traffic from the other domains.

    This post talks about moving a site (which I know you are not doing) but many of the principles Cutts talks about apply to your situation.

    Moving your site - Webmaster Tools Help

    I would check to make sure you did the redirects correctly,

    Best,

    Shawn
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    • Profile picture of the author etvconnect
      Pagerank has been set to zero, all SERPS have disappeared. Please tell me this is normal.
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      • Profile picture of the author TheContentAuthority
        etvconnect,

        Unfortunately when you redirect a URL that had pagerank to one that does not, you will lose a significant portion of it. It should bounce back a little bit but a 301 will only pass on somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10% of the original PR from the more established domain.

        Are you saying the old domains (A and B) have disappeared from SERP's? If so this is odd and should not have happened. Those URLs should have maintained their positions. It is the new URL that should not be seen anywhere for a while (until it is indexed and begins to build PR/backlinks, etc).

        The amount of redirects you have is not excessive by any means. Could there be other reasons they were de-indexed?
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        • Profile picture of the author etvconnect
          @TheContentAuthority

          Everything is indexed fine, my new domain was picked up and indexed just hours after I did the redirects, but there is no ranking. I found out that some deep pages from the old domain B are still included in the index.

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        • Profile picture of the author pasik
          Originally Posted by TheContentAuthority View Post

          etvconnect,

          Unfortunately when you redirect a URL that had pagerank to one that does not, you will lose a significant portion of it. It should bounce back a little bit but a 301 will only pass on somewhere in the neighborhood of about 10% of the original PR from the more established domain.

          Are you saying the old domains (A and B) have disappeared from SERP's? If so this is odd and should not have happened. Those URLs should have maintained their positions. It is the new URL that should not be seen anywhere for a while (until it is indexed and begins to build PR/backlinks, etc).

          The amount of redirects you have is not excessive by any means. Could there be other reasons they were de-indexed?
          This is nonsense. Of course the old domains disappear from SERPs.

          301 tells Google that the content from old domain is transferred to another domain so there is no need to show these old domains in SERPs any more.

          If you did 301s correctly (to each individual page accordingly) you should get your rankings back soon. I just three days ago moved one of my sites to new domain. So far four pages are indexed in Google and all these pages have replaced my old urls in SERPs. The positions are exactly the same as they were with my old domain.
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  • Profile picture of the author johnasthlon
    Originally Posted by etvconnect View Post

    Hello

    Suppose I have an old 301 redirect which points DOMAIN A towards DOMAIN B.
    Since a few days, I obtained a great domain name (DOMAIN C) and decided to break up the old 301 redirect and point DOMAIN A and DOMAIN B seperately to DOMAIN C.

    I did this a three days ago and all my rankings (which were quite good) have suddenly disappeared.

    What is happening? Can't Google handle this?


    Kind Regards
    However you broke up your 301 redirection to DOMAIN A and DOMAIN B, but it will take time for Google in order to rank in Google. You must have to wait until Google crawl your new domain and entire pages.
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  • Profile picture of the author petemcal
    Would you not have been better just redirecting Domain B to C seen as how all the rank had already permanently been redirected to that property. I don't understand the logic in taking the flow apart and separately sending each site to site C.

    But yes it is completely normal to lose rank when using redirects. It can take a couple of months to regain your pagerank and SERP positions (usually they'll come back slightly weaker anyway as there's a partial loss of pagerank with 301 redirects)
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    • Profile picture of the author etvconnect
      I broke the old redirect because I did not want to make a "chain" of redirects. A couple of months waiting is way too long. Other people say it just takes a few weeks. I had such good rankings and now it doesn't make sense to switch back.
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      • Profile picture of the author boirun03
        Any update on this etv? I did the same thing early dec and I'm still invisible to google. I have heard that it could take 3 months or so. Don't know if I'm an idiot to keep waiting or an idiot to do the redirect in the first place. Getting impatient. Have others had to wait 3 months?
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  • Profile picture of the author Ducksauce
    Seems tome that you are manipulating PR and not using the 301 PERMANENT re-direct correctly, like one company buying out another etc. Choping and changing permanent re-directs, I don't see what the issue is with a couple of months wait, designed to stop people just like you.

    I am not trying to be personal, it may a come across that way a bit. Maybe you should use other redirects that are temp ones.
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    • Profile picture of the author KurtJames
      Did you change the site structure or was there a big content change on the new site/domain? This can sometimes cause issues.

      Also, you might want to double check that the 301s are setup correctly by using one of the HTTP header checker tools.

      I would not panic since it has only being 3-days. How often was your site crawled? You can check your server logs to see if googlebot has visited your sites/domains and followed the 301 redirect.

      Give it 7-10 days and see where you are at. Then you can panic. heh
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