Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Can I remove 301 redirects after some time?
-
Hello,
We have an very large number of 301 redirects on our site and would like to find a way to remove some of them.
Is there a time frame after which Google does not need a 301 any more? For example if A is 301 redirected to B, does Google know after a while not to serve A any more, and replaces any requests for A with B?
How about any links that go to A?
Or: Is the only option to have all links that pointed to A point to B and then the 301 can be removed after some time?
Thank you for you you help!
-
Thank you both for your answers, I really appreciate, they are very helpful!
-
Why do you think there are too many 301 redirects? There is no limit to how many 301 redirects you can have and I'm not sure why you think removing them will 'ease download times'.
Your concern about the links is correct. If you remove the 301s then you lose the value that these links are passing through the redirect.
I'd love to know who these 'experts' are because I've never heard of that. Sounds completely made up and, to my knowledge, is incorrect.
I would suggest you take a look at Google's explanation about 301 redirects as it could prove informative to you.
-
Thank you for your reply.
We want to get rid of the 301s as there are just too many. Our site was not set up with lots of strategy, and it takes hundresds of 301's to consolidate.
The reason to get rif of them is to ease management, and to ease download time.
My concern is not only the 404s it is the links that go to the pages that where 301.
I have heard from some experts that it is ok to remove the 301s as once Google realizes one page is permanently redirected to another it keeps a recod to it and the 301 i sno longer needed. I am not sure that is correct.
Thank you!
-
Streamline is right that you should keep the 301 redirects in place so that any links pointing to the old pages pass value through the redirect to the new pages.
Is there a time frame after which Google does not need a 301 any more? For example if A is 301 redirected to B, does Google know after a while not to serve A any more, and replaces any requests for A with B?
Simply put, no. If you remove the 301 redirect then any requests for page A will return page A and not B.
How about any links that go to A?
These links will now be passing all their value to page A.
Or: Is the only option to have all links that pointed to A point to B and then the 301 can be removed after some time?
If it is possible for you to change all links that point to A, to then point to B, then maybe. However, it is very unlikely you will be able to do this and it will be extremely time consuming.
In short, your best option is to leave the 301 redirects in place as best SEO practice.
-
May I ask why you wish to remove the redirects? If other sites are linking to any of your old pages, then you should leave the 301 redirects in place since the search engines will likely crawl those links only to discover a 404 page.
Otherwise, you could go ahead and try removing the 301 redirects and monitor Google Webmaster Tools to see if Google encounters any 404 pages. If you do see the 404s start increasing, then you'll know that you should probably put the 301 redirects back in place.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
301 redirect syntax for htaccess
I'm working on some htaccess redirects for a few stray pages and have come across a few different varieties of 301s that are confusing me a bit....Most sources suggest: Redirect 301 /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html or using some combination of: RewriteRule + RewriteCond + RegEx I've also found examples of: RedirectPermanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html I'm confused because our current htaccess file has quite a few (working) redirects that look like this: Redirect permanent /pageA.html http://www.site.com/pageB.html This syntax seems to work, but I'm yet to find another Redirect permanent in the wild, only examples of Redirect 301 or RedirectPermanent Is there any difference between these? Would I benefit at all from replacing Redirect permanent with Redirect 301?
Technical SEO | | SamKlep1 -
CNAME vs 301 redirect
Hi all, Recently I created a website for a new client and my next job is trying to get them higher in Google. I added them in OSE and noticed some strange backlinks. To my surprise the client has about 20 domain names. All automatically poiting to (showing) the same new mainsite now. www.maindomain.nl www.maindomain.be
Technical SEO | | Houdoe
www.maindomain.eu
www.maindomain.com
www.otherdomain.nl
www.otherdomain.com
... Some of these domains have backlinks too (but not so much). I suggested to 301 redirect them all to the main site. Just to avoid duplicate content. But now the webhoster comes into play: "It's a problem, client has only 1 hosting account, blablabla...". They told me they could CNAME the 20 domains to the main domain. Or A-record them to an IP address. This is too technical stuff for me. So my concrete questions are: Is it smart to do anything at all or am I just harming my client? The main site is ranking pretty well now. And some backlinks are from their copy sites (probably because everywhere the logo links to the full mainsite url). Does the CNAME or A-record solution has the same effect as a 301 redirect, from SEO perspective? Many thanks,
Hans0 -
Increase 404 errors or 301 redirects?
Hi all, I'm working on an e-commerce site that sells products that may only be available for a certain period of time. Eg. A product may only be selling for 1 year and then be permanently out of stock. When a product goes out of stock, the page is removed from the site regardless of any links it may have gotten over time. I am trying to figure out the best way to handle these permanently out of stock pages. At the moment, the site is set up to return a 404 page for each of these products. There are currently 600 (and increasing) instances of this appearing on Google Webmasters. I have read that too many 404 errors may have a negative impact on your site, and so thought I might 301 redirect these URLs to a more appropriate page. However I've also read that too many 301 redirects may have a negative impact on your site. I foresee this to be an issue several years down the road when the site has thousands of expired products which will result in thousands of 404 errors or 301 redirects depending on which route I take. Which would be the better route? Is there a better solution?
Technical SEO | | Oxfordcomma0 -
Can you 301 redirect a page to an already existing/old page ?
If you delete a page (say a sub department/category page on an ecommerce store) should you 301 redirect its url to the nearest equivalent page still on the site or just delete and forget about it ? Generally should you try and 301 redirect any old pages your deleting if you can find suitable page with similar content to redirect to. Wont G consider it weird if you say a page has moved permenantly to such and such an address if that page/address existed before ? I presume its fine since say in the scenario of consolidating departments on your store you want to redirect the department page your going to delete to the existing pages/department you are consolidating old departments products into ?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
We have set up 301 redirects for pages from an old domain, but they aren't working and we are having duplicate content problems - Can you help?
We have several old domains. One is http://www.ccisound.com - Our "real" site is http://www.ccisolutions.com The 301 redirect from the old domain to the new domain works. However, the 301-redirects for interior pages, like: http://www.ccisolund.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators do not work. This URL should redirect to http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/category/cd-duplicators but as you can see it does not. Our IT director supplied me with this code from the HT Access file in hopes that someone can help point us in the right direction and suggest how we might fix the problem: RewriteCond%{HTTP_HOST} ccisound.com$ [NC] RewriteRule^(.*)$ http://www.ccisolutions.com/$1 [R=301,L] Any ideas on why the 301 redirect isn't happening? Thanks all!
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
How long will Google take to stop crawling an old URL once it has been 301 redirected
I need to do a clean-up old urls that have been redirected in sitemap and was wondering about this.
Technical SEO | | Ant-8080 -
Why is a 301 redirected url still getting indexed?
We recently fixed a redirect issue in a website, and although it appears that the redirection is working fine, the url in question keeps on getting crawled, indexed and cached by google. The redirect was done a month ago, and google shows cached version of it, even for a couple of days ago. Manual checking shows that its being redirected, and also a couple of online tools i checked report a 301 redirect. Do you have any idea why this could be happening? The website I'm talking about is www.hotelmajestic.gr and its being redirected to www.hotel-majestic.gr
Technical SEO | | dim_d0 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0