I consolidated a small number of reference sites in October and 301'ed the domains to the new main one.

It was entirely pointless - all prior rankings for all the sites on Google are completedly absent for the new main site, Yahoo! doesn't even recognise the place, and overall after 4 months there was been zero SEO benefit.

I should have simply left up the original sites and added some form of redirect links, so at least I'd keep rankings, be able to redirect traffic, and even get some backlinks into the process.

Well, I'm about to consolidate a couple of domains again, but this time I figure against simply setting up a .htaccess redirect if is offers absolutely no benefit whatsoever.

However, I'm not certain on which methods would work best for redirecting human traffic to the new domain, in ways that search engines are going to be least upset about.

I figure that a meta-refresh is out of the question without inviting the search engine police.

Although I've heard of fun with JavaScript, I figure search engines are more than wise to that?

Another option might be Flash message with an embedded links - but that presumes enough users will have Flash as a plug-in installed, and I'm not convinced of its practicality.

I know it means I'll have duplicate content - but let the search engines worry about filtering the old duplicates from the new content - they've already shown they care little for when I play nice so I guess it's time to try and learn a little sneakiness from the old PageRank hoarders and doorway pros.

You should have cloaked the old sites to redirect to you but allow the engines to crawl them still. Then when the new site picked up you could have turned off the cloak....

*Let the uproar on cloaking begin, even though it would have saved Brain*

Save Brian!!

:)

Reg: "Ahh, yes. Well, I think I should point out first, Brian, in all fairness, that we are not in fact the rescue committee. However, I have been asked to read the following prepared statement on behalf of the Movement.

Uh, 'We, the People's Front of Judea, brackets, officials, end brackets, do hereby convey our sincere fraternal and sisterly greetings to you, Brian, on this, the occasion of your martyrdom." Monty Python, Life of Brian, Scene 31.

:)

Brian wrote: I figure that a meta-refresh is out of the question without inviting the search engine police. Ok - seriously - what about testing a delayed meta refresh on one of the sites? What have you got to lose?

Maybe try testing with and without robots meta tag?

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow">
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10; url=http://www.mynewdomain.com/">

Thanks, Reg. :)

Hello Brian,
Have you tried the delayed meta refresh? 10 seconds should be safe enough no?
Cheers,
Johann

I simply ended up leaving up old archive versions of a couple of sites (still useful content) and left a plainly visible link for human traffic to clickthrough at the top of the page.

I'd rather not touch any kind of redirect, as the "safe" ones seemed worthless, and the others just seem like red rags to search engines.

I figure there's not reason to risk having sites dropped for playing fair, or for simply using a feature some may abuse.

Well I had some pretty good results with 301 but for the others it is not indeed clear waters..
Cheers,
Johann

I figure that a meta-refresh is out of the question without inviting the search engine police. I use meta-refreshes all the time with no problem at all with google, yahoo or M$N.

Although I've heard of fun with JavaScript, I figure search engines are more than wise to that? If your redirecting for legit reasons, why fear what the SEs are going to do? ...and yes googlebot reads javascript.

If your redirecting for legit reasons, why fear what the SEs are going to do? A little collateral damage never seemed to touch any SE conscience. I'd rather avoid being part of that.

A little collateral damage never seemed to touch any SE conscience. I'd rather avoid being part of that.
I have not "run the numbers", but off hand, I think you have a better chance of winning the us powerball lottery than currently being hurt from SE "collateral damage".

After the Searchking fiasco, I think the SEs (in particular google) learned a valuable lessen; Webmasters that have been unjustly injured have a loud voice (it comes with the biz ;) ) and it is very bad press for a great big business to stomp on an innocent little business...

Jill Whalen gives an interesting account of disappearing from the map for a 301:

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/2223#comment-11373

Maybe disappearing for a few months is just all part of the technical issues of working with a large set of data. But it's hard not to see it as anti-spam measure - especially as I can think of simple spam methods for 301's if I really wanted to use them.

Brian,

Interesting timing. I am consolidating right now myself. However, I am not concerned with not getting a benefit. I am concerned with getting a penalty. Google is on a rampage! Did you get any kind of penalty from the 301? Did you use .htaccess as follows?

Here is the code that I am going to use in the .htaccess file.

Redirect 301 /folder/file.html htt p://sub.mydomain.com/file.html

Any warnings for me?

Jill Whalen gives an interesting account of disappearing from the map for a 301:Not the way I remember and read it, Brian.
Jill was changing domain names, the 301 did NOT hurt her, but it also did not help her.

I can't see how you got that the 301 she used penalized her, if that were the case, why is her "new" site in the top five for her targeted keywords in a very compeditive area??

Not to mention the fact that all this happened to Jill's site YEARS ago and google has changed a lot just in the last few months.

I don't care if you use 301's or not. But you are twisting a story I know (I remember when jill did this) to fit your position.

Jill was NEVER penalized for using a 301 when she changed her domain name.