How does Analytics treat display 301's?

[ckieff]

I've closed down a duplicate site and used 301 redirects in the .htaccess to move all of the pages to the main site. We did 301's on a page by page basis because url's had changed.

Question #1 Analytics have shown 0 referrals from old site to new one. Does this mean that the 301's are not working? Or does Analytics not show 301's?

Thanks
Chris

[beu]

In order for Google Analytics to record the referrer the javascript must ping Google's server. Because 301s contain no javascript the redirect URL becomes the landing page's referrer.

In other words if a user from Google clicks URL "a" in the SERP and URL "a" then redirects to URL "b", URL "a" will be the original referrer and not Google.

[ckieff]

Thanks beu.
That's what I thought but it never hurts to check.

[beu]

no problem ckieff, happy to help!