Roughly what percentage of PageRank is lost through a 301 redirect?
Sam Harries, Exeter, United Kingdom
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Is this still as relevant today? What's the latest? Great video! Thanks!
Hi so here's a question… I have a local business. my website has maybe a hundred backlinks and nothing too special. Domain Authority may be around 2-3 ( you get the idea). Now, my keywords only really rank for local keywords like eyebrows orlando or eyebrows in orlando ect.. i bought an expired domain that has over 70k backlinks and DA is somewhere around 50+ and the keywords, for example, would be less detailed but extremely competitive ranking all 80 plus keywords on first page of google like eyebrows, eyebrows near me, the best eyebrows ect. so my question to you is this, because the new domain i bought has all these keyword rankings and link juice, would it make more sense to i guess replace my existing domain name that iv started with to the ranking one or have it redirected? if i have it redirected will that ranking domain keep all its keyword rankings and add it to my existing domain? Will i have to redo my whole seo to fit all those newer keywords or will they just carry over? So if redirecting doesnt all carry over the rankings do i just redirect my the 1st domain i started with to the ranked domain? If i did that would i loose all my local keywords even if all that content and seo all stays the same? What would be best?
That’s great but this video is 2013. Has anything changed by 2019?
I WILL BE SUCCESSFUL – Adrian Trummer
When he says "link", he means a direct link; a link to a URL which returns HTTP 200.
When he says "301", he means a redirected link; a link from some page X to a URL, call it A, which returns HTTP 301 pointing to another URL, call it B. Clicking on the "301" takes you to B, and equally as much PageRank is retained as would be if you'd followed a direct link to B. Page A doesn't get a PageRank score, since it redirects to B. Any backlinks to A contribute PageRank to B instead.
Picturing the web as a digraph whose nodes are URLs and whose directed edges are hyperlinks, then if URL X has a link to URL A, which returns a 301 to URL B, the PageRank result is the same as if A and B were the same node, so that X points directly to B instead of doing so via A.
In short,
301 loses same pagerank as a link does.
I use a 301 redirect from http to https as to always have my users on ssl. Is this a bad thing? Should I just allow a user to use http and https interchangeably?
Matt Cutts is just awesome. Now that answer my question, clearly. Thanks a lot Matt.
I recently used a 301 redirect for my site on home page, but now the home page is not getting ranked as it is not seen in the search results. it has badly affected my ranking. What should i do?
Agreed – I was mainly venting about most of his videos. This one is more clear than others and does do a good job of providing an answer. But as Nate pointed out, he doesn't actually say how much – just that it's the same as a link. Splitting hairs? Yeah, probably 🙂
and why does youtube think i'm putting in a web address every time I type htt p. That's annoying.
Ok so how are we suppose to use "htt-p-s"? My "htt-p" sites redirect to "htt-p-s" and 301 redirect is the only way godaddy would allows this to work. Looks like I shouldn't have protected my sites with "htt-p-s".
Errr so a 301 is like adding a second link, so you have Link -> 301 -> page … instead of just Link –> Page – so isn't this like passing through two links?
Hi Spook Seo ..I wanna personally ask you a question…if you can plz email me at amantndn@gmail.com
I have just started my new website…Should I redirect users from old website to the new one..New one has unique and original posts and old one compared to this doesnt even stand out in the league…Thanks in advance if you could help
I agree with you @Zac Bruce. This question was clearly answered by Matt (this time). I'm glad to know that using 301's doesn't really have an "all that bad" effect.
Completely agree. If you use 301s correctly (i.e. telling search engines a page has permanently moved) how is that anything like a link? There should be no loss whatsoever for a 'permanent move' which can't possibly be taken care of with a link instead.
Totally agree. EVERY SINGLE TIME Mr Matt Cuts answer raises more questions. So the same is lost as through a link? How much is lost through a link? if I go by some of the other answers I lost MOST (85%) of my page rank… so using a 301 is not just harmful, it is disastrous and no web site should ever be able to change a URL unless it can afford the loss of revenue to ride it out indefinitely. I gambled and changed my main sites URLs 2 years ago now and my business has been virtually destroyed.
I don't see how people are misunderstanding his answer then implying he doesn't answer at all.
He answers the question at hand fine.
Question: What percentage of pagerank is lost through a 301 redirect?
Answer: About _nearly_ the same as a normal link, that is, .85 or .9 (around, c'mon if you're that interested go look at some patents) of the original flow from a page, then take all the links and equally branch that among all the links. How many links do you have, be it 301s or otherwise?
It's not bad at all. It could actually be helpful, but it's usually unnecessary.
I'm confused. In what way could a 301 replace a link? How could you build a site with 301s instead of links? You'd have to at least link to a URL that then redirects to the destination page. You'd lose PR one way or another. Or both ways.
That was completely unhelpful.
I was about to post that until I realised you had beat me to it 😉
Page Rank? There are people who still worry about it?
The platform code (PHP) would have no bearing on page rank, it’s the actual content and HTML generated that Google looks at, not server-side code.
wow,what percentage of pagerank is lost through a 301 redirect??there is no answer.
I know they can't reveal their secrets with any hard details (although Rand Fishkin has some good material on why Google should make their algorithm public), I'm just tired of every single one of Matt Cutts' videos being thrown across the internet like he's finally clearing an issue up when they often avoid the question or raise more questions than answers. Just vetting my frustration 🙂
Obviously
Most of it, Google just won't say how much.
Use canonical references in both cases. WP is excellent at managing them actually. There's also plugins to make it easier.
If you use a WordPress install on your site you won't be penalized for it. Google actually likes the standard structure as it's easier for them to index etc. My company has dozens of WordPress sites on the first page of Google for serious, competitive terms and there's never been even a small problem.
We have redirected few pages using 301. We were lucky to get the same PR of old page to new URL. But now, really fear to redirect a URL with PR to another. (actually its not for any cloaking purpose bu only due problem in URL structuring with id calling. As it is not seo friendly ). Much confused if the current PR not carried to new URL.
What is the difference between a curation content and a copy content. What percentage of text must be new in order to be considered a nice and not copied content? thanks
Ehhh… okay Matt
In my experience, you lose PR on 302's.
You can always set those duplicate content pages to no index and links to those pages no follow so that juice is not passed on to them. That should eliminate duplicate content penalties.
I believe he said that (301 = links in terms of PR lost) just to make sure nobody tries to outsmart Google and try to reverse-engineer how Google work. Even though I don't believe that his answer is true (specially that he had to ask the team behind it like he doesn't already know!!), the big question remains unanswered: how much PR is lost when using 301 redirects?!!
What this guy said…except the part about it being annoying.