301 redirect dropped page rank
-
Hi,
We have a www domain that I have changed to a non www domain. The www domain had been in place for some time and had a good page rank, PR4.
After this change the page rank dropped significantly (PR0, and now recently back to PR2) despite it being a 301 redirect which I thought "should" carry over the page rank.
Yes, I am aware I should have just left it be. Hind sight 20/20 .. ya ya ya
My questions
- Is the 301 the correct method for this?
- Why did the page rank drop despite the 301?
- Should we go back to the www domain at this point?
Thanks
Kris
-
Hi Kris,
Google's public position on the use of 301 redirects is that it will preserve almost all of the link juice from the old page and pass it to the new. This Google webmaster video from Matt Cutts was uploaded in April of this year and is fairly clear on that.
However, we need to remember that PageRank is basically a measure of the number and quality of links to your site. There is a detailed explanation here.
So, it may be that there has been some change in the the sites that link to yours between PR updates. You can use SEOmoz tools to conduct a little CSI on the sites and check this if you want to.
First, find the sites that are linking to yours in Open Site Explorer. Export the Report to csv to grab the list of sites and open it up in Excel. You can then use the SEOmoz Historical PageRank Tool to check whether there has been any significant change in the PR of the sites linking to you. If you find some, there is your answer.
If you do not find any significant changes...then perhaps the reversal of the redirect has triggered some of that recalculation described in the PR article -and since it is coming back...
On the subject of there being some mis-match issue in Google's Index between the non www root domain and the www subdomain, there is one thing that occurs to me.
Is it possible that you have changed the 301 redirect, but still have an instruction existing in Google Webmaster Tools which is telling Google that your primary domain is the www? This could create some confusion for Googlebot and perhaps influence Google's view of how "friendly" your site is. It shouldn't really affect PageRank, but could affect rankings.
Since it hasn't made any difference to your traffic, I would not be too worried, but would probably take a look at the link profile and see if there is a need to work on attracting more or better links for the site.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Hi Sha,
Thanks for your reply!
I checked in to the visits on the site as they have remained fairly consistent from the months prior. I understand the PR toolbar is not updated regularly, and that PR has limited value in the grand scheme of things. My concern is largely on the PR as is the most visible factor at the moment, based on that the 301 redirect "should" have maintained most(?) of the PR with out disruption.
It is just very odd that this would happen with in days of the change, the content has not changed drastically.... this is going to sound like a stretch but, is it possible Google has attributed my root domain against the sub-domain as duplicate content in it's cache regardless of the 301 redirect?
I am just trying to understand the problem, if it really is one, and if there is any good solutions apart from just waiting it out and rebuilding on what we currently have in place now. Everything I have changed was in accordance to the way it "should" be according to Google and the internet at large...
Thanks!
-
Hi Kris,
An alarm bell rang for me when you mentioned that your focus here is on the effect upon PageRank. You should be very careful in attributing the change in Pagerank to the implementation of the 301 as Toolbar PageRank is updated infrequently and in a very ad hoc fashion. This means that there may have been other things which occurred over the period between PageRank updates which were responsible for the change.
Rand gave a very good explanation of the vagaries of PageRank and the differences between the two types of PageRank in this Whiteboard Friday recently - What is Google's PageRank Good For?
Given the changes that have occurred recently in the world of search, I would be looking fairly carefully at the possibility that some of those changes may be responsible for any negative impacts on the site. Also, has there been a negative impact on traffic and/or rankings? These things are really much more important than PR.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
Hi Wayne,
I am currently using mod_rewrite to rewrite the sub-domain to the root domain. Is the 301 not a permanent redirect?
Also mod_rewrite can pass a header(301) with the redirect of the domain, which from what I understand "should" have told Google, etc.. that the site is now moved permanently.
What header should be used for the redirect?Prior to me changing the www domain to a non www domain it was reversed and going the other direction... non www domain redirect to the www domain.
Rearding the Canonicalitzation, I have additional rewrite rules to combat duplicate content issues such as index.php rewritten to / and so on and so forth... as well as the sub-domain to root domain rewrites
Thanks!
-
You may be suffering from Canonicalitzation. There's a post about it here http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
You should use mod rewrite to redirect a subdomain to the root domain, not 301. I would remove the 301 and with time your position should be restored.
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
-
Can i do 301 redirect
So this is what im doing, 301 redirect to my site/allen-webdesign points to main domain Allen is the city i have a page called local-webdesign with all the cities. Will this improve my ranking or should i stop?
Technical SEO | | jsdfw0 -
Sudden Drop in Rankings
I manage a site and this past month have noticed some pretty significant drops in rankings for some of our main keywords. I'm trying to understand why and what I can do to correct it. We did do some 301 redirects a little over a month ago so I've been wondering if that has anything to do with it as Google indexes the new URLs. One thing I did notice in Moz is that it is showing that Google is indexing the new URLs but associating them with the wrong keywords in the wrong location. The company services three locations and each location has a service page on the site. But Moz is showing that in Atlanta, the indexed URL is the Nashville one, etc. Is there any way to affect that? Another thing to note is that organic search traffic is actually up so it doesn't appear to be affecting them which I find a bit strange. Just looking for any insight as to things I should be looking into to explain the sudden drops. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Will a Robots.txt 'disallow' of a directory, keep Google from seeing 301 redirects for pages/files within the directory?
Hi- I have a client that had thousands of dynamic php pages indexed by Google that shouldn't have been. He has since blocked these php pages via robots.txt disallow. Unfortunately, many of those php pages were linked to by high quality sites mulitiple times (instead of the static urls) before he put up the php 'disallow'. If we create 301 redirects for some of these php URLs that area still showing high value backlinks and send them to the correct static URLs, will Google even see these 301 redirects and pass link value to the proper static URLs? Or will the robots.txt keep Google away and we lose all these high quality backlinks? I guess the same question applies if we use the canonical tag instead of the 301. Will the robots.txt keep Google from seeing the canonical tags on the php pages? Thanks very much, V
Technical SEO | | Voodak0 -
Why are my 301 redirects and duplicate pages (with canonicals) still showing up as duplicates in Webmaster Tools?
My guess is that in time Google will realize that my duplicate content is not actually duplicate content, but in the meantime I'd like to get your guys feedback. The reporting in Webmaster Tools looks something like this. Duplicates /url1.html /url2.html /url3.html /category/product/url.html /category2/product/url.html url3.html is the true canonical page in the list above._ url1.html,_ and url2.html are old URLs that 301 to url3.html. So, it seems my bases are covered there. _/category/product/url.html _and _/category2/product/url.html _ do not redirect. They are the same page as url3.html. Each of the category URLs has a canonical URL of url3.html in the header. So, it seems my bases are covered there as well. Can I expect Google to pick up on this? Why wouldn't it understand this already?
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
Do I need to 301 EVERY page?
I have a client who is consolidating multiple EMD domains into a single domain for SEO reasons and for practical reason, like not having to produce content and perform SEO for 20 domains. My question is this: Do I need to 301 every single page from these old EMD domains? I bill this client hourly and while I could take the time to write 301s for literally thousands of pages I feel that this might not be the best use of his money, that I could strategically 301 the landing pages that get traffic and then route everything else to the new root domain...thoughts? I've researched this and have not been able to hear a really strong opinion yet.
Technical SEO | | BrianJGomez0 -
Event Landing Pages not ranking
Hi there I need to optimize the website of a club/concert venue. The site isn't bad and has authority, but the event pages don't seem to rank and I'm unsure about the reason. There is an overview page of the events: http://www.kaufleuten.ch/events/ What happens currently when clicking on a specific event (on "WEITER", top right of each event) is that users get redirected to a hashtag page by jQuery. The href of "WEITER" itself links to another landing page (which is IMO the one we should see ranking for the specific event). Here is a concrete example: Look at the event "Tanz & Konzert: Andreas Vollenweider, Seven & ROKPA-KIDS" on /events by clicking on "WEITER", you get directed to http://www.kaufleuten.ch/events/#2790/andreas-vollenweider the actual "WEITER" link in the source code though, points to the landing page http://www.kaufleuten.ch/event/andreas-vollenweider/ This seems to be done by an AJAX load: jQuery loads a DIV with the ID "ajax-content". Apparently, this is the code responsible for it: $(„.link“, click(function() {
Technical SEO | | zeepartner
el.find('.wrapper').load(target+' #ajax-content', function() {
});
return false;
}); I know the site has good authority and should rank well. however, the event landing pages never seem to appear, but only the page /events is ranking: SERP
(Strangely, when using the site command, the event page suddenly appears above: SERP. (But I have never seen this in a "normal search query", even though we are the organisers and should at least be among the top 5). Now my question: Does Google consider this AJAX load to be some sort of cloaking? (because the href in the code is different to you actually end up by clicking "WEITER"). Will the landing pages begin to rank if we disable this AJAX load? Or should we stick to hashtags and not even create landing pages? (but then, we will have no control over title tags of specific events, right?) Thanks for your help, I'm a bit lost here as my JS knowledge is meagre... Cheers,
Phil0 -
302 or 301 redirect to https ?
I am redirecting whole site to https. Is there a difference between 302 or 301 redirect for seo? Site never been indexed. Planning to do that with .htaccess command RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
Technical SEO | | Kotkov
RewriteRule ^(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L] There are plenty of ways http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/ssl-example-usage-in-htaccess.html Which way would be the best? Thanks is advance0 -
200 Redirects for SEO instead of 301
We are working with a company on re-platforming our website. On a call yesterday they outlined a strategy to use 200 redirects for our top keywords instead of 301s. I am not familiar with this type of redirect and was wondering if anyone could provide some more insight.
Technical SEO | | EvergladesDirect0