Passing Value of backlinks when 301 Redirecting

[adamclark]

Hi,

I have recently permanently redirected an old domain with a PR of 5 to a new domain with a lower PR due to branding reasons.

The old domain had several hundred backlinks which the value of as I understood it would eventually pass on to the new domain.

Currently the new domain has 0 backlinks and still a very low PR even though I redirected a PR 5 domain to it and Google has fully indexed all the new pages - so I know it has gone through the site.

In addition the old domain although redirected still shows up as having several hundred backlinks - generally how does Google pass the value and when? Is it on PR updates or a few weeks after picking up the redirect? Or have I misunderstood the way a redirect works and these links are now inffective?

Adam

[MattUK]

The benefit of the links will be passed to new site (the one you're redirecting to) within a short time, depending on how often the redirected pages/domain get spidered.

I did a similar thing with two domains a couple of months ago. Within two weeks the target domain received a huge boost in almost all of the targeted keyword terms. The redirected domain is still registering backlinks to it even now. You won't see the updated PR or backlinks stats until Google performs a general PR and backlink update.

[adamclark]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the reply. Interesting how you got a boost in rankings from the redirection that quickly - the rankings for our new site have just bottomed and the redirect happened nearly 2 months ago. I know that the redirect worked as Google has indexed all the site pages and in fact now has more indexed than it did before.

Just wondered if I might be missing something.

Adam

[SEOMalc]

Just to provide some personal experience for you...

I had a client that had 6 domains all running the same content. They chose to have a domain that wasn't getting indexed as their primary domain so I 301'ed the remaining 5.

It took around 2 months to get all the pages indexed on the primary domain and around 4 months for the PR toolbar (or meaningless green bar indicator) to show a PR of 3 for the pages.

Oddly though the new domain doesn't show any backlinks.

Anyhow

All the best

SEOMalc.

[g1smd]

I assume that the redirect preserved the full URL, folder and filename, as originally requested.

Do not redirect everything to the root of the target site.