Does Age in URL transfer with 301? [Archive]

Nacho

07-09-2005, 03:04 PM

Good point David and thank you for your example. It's a very useful experiment to see the result for a domain.

However, it may or may not be a domain. The question was triggered on a site redesign. In this case it's not the domain that is being 301ed but an actual set of URLs. For example:

domain.com/old-category1-name.html

gets 301 to

domain.com/new-category1-name.html

By this we know it's giving the search engines the instuction to notify that a page was permanently moved to a new destination, as well as link popularity will follow. The question is, will the age recorded in the search engine's records for "old-category1-name.html" follow down to the "new-category1-name.html"?

We are interested in doing it, only if it's safe, to improve the keywords on the URL. Some of them are even misspelled, threfore require this enhancement.

Jill Whalen

07-09-2005, 05:44 PM

What I'm concerned is, if search engines consider the URL's age as part of the time factors and it has any value in the algorithms, will that transfer over to the new URL after doing a 301?

It does not appear to with Google.

But Scottie Claiborne has found a great workaround which she has successfully used on many sites. Basically, it's just to use a 302-redirect temporarily until the aging delay is over (http://www.highrankings.com/issue142.htm#guest).

Marcia

07-09-2005, 06:10 PM

Yahoo and Google don't seem to handle 301's the same way - or 302's, for that matter.

Just this week I saw a site 301'd *to* showing up for having backlinks at Yahoo that actually point to the original site that was redirected to it. And that redirection was implemented a few years ago, back in Inktomi days.

Very interesting about 302's being used within a site, thanks.

Now I'm wondering what effect it would have if pages in the Supplemental Index were 302'd to new pages on a site with better content.

Nacho

07-10-2005, 02:34 PM

It does not appear to with Google.

But Scottie Claiborne has found a great workaround which she has successfully used on many sites. Basically, it's just to use a 302-redirect temporarily until the aging delay is over (http://www.highrankings.com/issue142.htm#guest).
Thanks for the article Jill, it's a great read! However, it still doesn't answer the challange we have. It's mainly focused on moving a site to a new domain.

In our challange, we're keeping the same domain. We only want to switch URLs for a bunch of categories on a site.

It's my understanding that URLs is what makes pages unique on the web and what search engines assign a signature file to. A 302 will not help the new URL rank higher because the search engine considers it a temporary move, therefore link pop and other factors don't follow. Plus one of those factors we want to add to the new URL are the keywords on it.

The general idea/concept of Scottie's article is there... but it doesn't quite describe a solution for what we need because it's not the domain that is in question.

Jill Whalen

07-10-2005, 03:24 PM

In our challange, we're keeping the same domain. We only want to switch URLs for a bunch of categories on a site.

Same old domain name?

Then you have nothing to worry about. Google's aging delay only effects new domain names, not new pages of a site.

Nacho

07-10-2005, 03:59 PM

Then you have nothing to worry about. Google's aging delay only effects new domain names, not new pages of a site.
I believe I do have elements to worry about and it does apply to each pages of a site.

According to the patent (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20050071741&OS=20050071741&RS=20050071741), it says:3. The method of claim 2, wherein the document includes a plurality of documents; and wherein the scoring the document includes: determining an age of each of the documents based on the inception dates corresponding to the documents, determining an average age of the documents based on the ages of the documents, and scoring the documents based, at least in part, on a difference between the ages of the documents and the average age.
<added>That's in the case for Google. I believe this will be a common approach by all search engines.</added>

Jill Whalen

07-10-2005, 06:26 PM

Regardless of what the patent says, there's been no evidence that I know of that shows any aging delay for new pages of an existing site. Have you seen any evidence of this?

Robert_Charlton

07-10-2005, 07:25 PM

Regardless of what the patent says, there's been no evidence that I know of that shows any aging delay for new pages of an existing site. Have you seen any evidence of this?

I have not seen any aging delay on the moderate number of new pages I've added to existing sites. I've also had good luck with 301s on existing pages on existing sites.

I'm wary, though, about big changes on a site. Anecdotal consensus seems to be that there shouldn't be any problem with, say, 50-100 pages, but I don't know that for sure. The number of pages threshold also may be much higher. It would be good to get feedback on this.

It's very likely that other quality factors of a site will affect how Google regards changes to it. See recent discussions on Google and website 'profiles'...
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=6709

I have had big problems with changing domain names. 7 or 8 months is about the right figure.

Robert_Charlton

07-10-2005, 07:29 PM

PS - I wouldn't go anywhere near that 302 scheme.

Nacho

07-11-2005, 12:16 AM

Regardless of what the patent says, there's been no evidence that I know of that shows any aging delay for new pages of an existing site. Have you seen any evidence of this?
It's impossible for me to disregard what the patent says. ;) I've always optimized sites with whatever leads I can get my hands on for it's future success rather than present or past.

What we've seen so far in terms of 301 for URL age testing at the page level is primarily based on very large sites (at 100K+ pages). The very little evidence we have is not enough to draw conclusions on any theories. The site we may be applying it to is much smaller (about 3K+ pages). This is why I've come to the forum to request others to share their trial and error.

Now, if in fact search engine's are or are not appling an age factor into individual pages. It would be very difficult to determine at what degree this factor plays a role along side the many other factors. We consider all factors important and therefore we worry.

rustybrick

07-11-2005, 09:34 AM

Nacho,

I think the answer, if I understand your question, is no.

I have expanded sites with new URLs, new subdomains, and 301s from old to new file names within the same domain, without any sandbox (or aging delay) occurring.

semanticist

07-11-2005, 11:28 AM

I've had similar experiences to Barry's. At least two clients since January have had to rewrite URLs within the same domain, using 301s - anywhere from 5K to 100K specific pages - with no noticable effects.

Nacho

07-11-2005, 02:34 PM

Thank you Jill, Barry and everyone else! I appreciate your feedback. :)

If age does not transfer in 301, then how big of a loss is it?

Marcia

07-11-2005, 03:20 PM

There have been some reports of large sites undergoing major overhauls (including URL changes) and having problems after. Mixed reports.

Is it possible to only move one site section to a new directory/naming scheme and see what happens, as a test?

Mel

07-17-2005, 10:11 AM

IMO just because Google have applied for a patent, it is not necessarily an indication that they are actually USING the methods outlined in a patent. The patent you are referring to is a great example, as I think everyone pretty well agrees that not all the 50 or so schemes mentioned could be implemented in any one search engine. The Localrank Patent is another example of a patent granted but not used.

I agree that the sandbox affects domains not pages.

stuntdubl

07-18-2005, 06:04 PM

The two biggest enemies of SEO in the future will be time and personalization. Factoring in the detriment and difficulty (higher possibility for failure over an increased duration of time) of both as a factor will reduce the relative value of SEO. As personalization divides larger markets it will lower the higher level of spoils for a top ranking as well. Of course making it tougher for SEO to exist will make top SEO's even more valuable I suppose.

I think time *is* a big issue, and you don't want to set your client back 6 months or more if possible. I think there are instances where 301's have worked against the "age filter", but it is not a guaranteed. 30 - 60 days for the SE's to pick up the 301 is a LONG time to lose some decent rankings regardless. Try to talk them out of it, or at least create a few content page "microsite" to start off for 3 - 9 months pointing a few links at it per week to build a base.

Historical data is definitely the place to be looking for weak links in the algo chain right now imho. If I *did* know 'em they wouldn't stay exploits for very long in a public forum.

This is a tough question that I think a lot of SEO's are probably trying to talk their clients out of at this point. Would love to hear more experience with 301'ing entire domains with any type of decent rankings in the last two years. Has anybody had the balls?

My guess (and from what I've heard) is that you might "hop outta the box" a bit sooner than if it was a brand new domain, but you're still gettin' tossed in 6 months or so (which sucks). Find out everything you can do to hop out quicker and keep your time outta the serps as small as possible.

<added>Found a couple 301 horror stories (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum23/3826.htm) from wmw...it seems maybe re-branding vs. re-sandboxing might be a great future debate.

randfish

07-18-2005, 07:12 PM

Nacho,

I think your question begs another question:

Which affects a page's rankings more - information architecture or historical URL location.

Based on my intuition, I'd 301 the page, not worry about losing the age bonus, and instead look forward to the bump I'd receive by re-organizing the site's documents to be more in tune with what searchers and engines want.

After all, there may not be a "perfect" solution, but this one is better than the old one!

Speaking on the subject of 301s putting sites back into the sandbox, I can confirm now that despite absolutely no "funny business" or unnatural links - it looks like SEOmoz has been "boxed" after the move from socengine.com/seo to seomoz.org - good data to have and a good example for those who'd like to point to one publicly.

teacake23

09-19-2005, 07:27 AM

Randfish, when you talk of 301's putting sites back into the sandbox, could you confirm that you are talking about full domain changes rather than just URL changes :eek:

I am faced with exactly the same problem submitted by Nacho; a whole load of URL changes (affecting 10K+ pages!) and obviously have some concerns about this. I understand that a 301 is the way to go (as there does not seem to be any 'better' alternatives) but any recommendations on how to go about it would be greatly appreciated.

Originally Posted by Robert_Charlton
I'm wary, though, about big changes on a site. Anecdotal consensus seems to be that there shouldn't be any problem with, say, 50-100 pages, but I don't know that for sure. The number of pages threshold also may be much higher.

Does this mean that I should introduce individual 301's gradually? If so what sort of frquency is acceptable? 50 a day/week/month, 100, 500, 1000, 5000?

Nacho, are you able to provide an update on how your implementation went or is going since starting this thread?

Robert_Charlton

09-19-2005, 05:05 PM

teacake - In my experience, the type of 301 that is most likely to put a site in the sandbox is a domain change. I believe that this is what randfish was talking about as well. In my experience, there's a 6-9 month delay in regaining rankings. If anyone has observed that this has changed, I'd love to hear about it.

Regarding a whole load of url changes on an existing domain, and whether you should introduce 301s gradually, it depends on the types of changes you are making.

If you've got a very large dynamic site with a whole raft of spider unfriendly parameters in your urls, and you want to use mod_rewrite to clean that up, I'd say go for it and do them all at once. I'm not even sure how you'd do that only halfway anyway. I haven't done a global cleanup on a very large site for a number of years, though, so I can't say what would happen with Google rankings... but ultimately the results are going to be better than what was there, so I don't think you have a choice.

If I were rebuilding a site with only several hundred pages, though, say reorganizing a site's directory structure for usability reasons, I'd try to introduce changes gradually if I could.

I'm consulting on rebuilding several sites currently. On one, which is a total site rebuild, I've got to confess I haven't been able to figure out how to make the changes gradual, and I don't know what's going to happen. On another, I see a very smooth upgrade path for introducing the changes a bit at a time, and I anticipate no problems.

In the case that Nacho describes, if the changes were just for SEO purposes... "to improve the keywords on the URL"... I don't think that I'd make them at all; but that's because I don't think that keywords in the url are important enough (at least in Google) to compensate for the potential traffic loss during the changeover.

teacake23

09-22-2005, 07:50 AM

Thanks for the advice Robert_Charlton, much appreciated.

I would welcome your views on a TLD domain change too as I am now tasked with redirecting www.mysite.co.uk to www.mysite.com. At this moment there are identical sites online (ooer) for each TLD, although I would like to 301 the .co.uk domain to point at the .com for brand identity (and good SEO practice) reasons. Both domains have a strong presence in Google with '000s pages indexed, good history and link equity for both - so its not as if I'm re-directing to a brand new domain name, therefore I guess there should be no sandbox issues?

The .co.uk has a much stronger link equity across most SEs, although Yahoo has ignored the .com completely (probably a duplicate content filter triggered a long time ago!).

If I were to redirect the .co.uk to the .com, I believe each page' link equity will be passed across (both domains use the same naming convention and will be redirected to the appropriate .com page), which will hopefully consolidate the .com link equity - any thoughts?
However, do you think Yahoo follow the redirects and simply switch the indexed pages to the .com domain accordingly? Any ideas how long this can take? With more than 50K .co.uk pages indexed in Yahoo, this is still a valuable traffic source.

If you've got a very large dynamic site with a whole raft of spider unfriendly parameters in your urls, and you want to use mod_rewrite to clean that up, I'd say go for it and do them all at once.
The site does indeed use unfriendly parameters in some pages, but so many pages are already listed (including a whole load of unfreindly ones!) I'm not sure wether to do a mod_rewrite or not at this satge, maybe that would be too many changes all at once!?
I think I'll get the 301 bedded-in first and let the dust settle.

projectphp

09-22-2005, 09:06 AM

We know link popularity follows to the new destination on 301s.
We do? I am still not convinced. Has anyone got any proof they can point to? Google never show enough links for me to be definitive on this.

Interestingly enough, Rand's site shows the exact same links, new and OLD URL:
http://www.google.com/search?q=link%3Awww.seomoz.org
http://www.google.com/search?q=link%3Awww.socengine.com%2Fseo%2F

Does that really mean Link Pop passes? And http://www.google.com/search?q=www.socengine.com%2Fseo%2F has one result:
SEOmoz | A Search Engine Optimization Resource
Free, open & content-rich. SEOmoz is a search engine optimization resource created
to benefit the entire SEO community. Every tool, service & article ...
www.seomoz.org/

I really am not sure what any of that means personally!

Robert_Charlton

09-22-2005, 03:36 PM

I would welcome your views on a TLD domain change too...

teacake - I thought my opening paragraph made my thoughts on this very clear...

In my experience, the type of 301 that is most likely to put a site in the sandbox is a domain change. I believe that this is what randfish was talking about as well. In my experience, there's a 6-9 month delay in regaining rankings. If anyone has observed that this has changed, I'd love to hear about it.

Be aware that a TLD change is a domain change, and these redirects, if you do them, are going to take a while to be credited.

Further discussion specifically about .co.uk and .com and dupe content rightly belongs in another thread... but, very briefly here, I'm thinking that you might be better off keeping the .co.uk and .com versions of your site as two separate sites. I spoke to Matt Cutts at SES about this very specifically, and he suggests that Google, at least, is smart enough not to assign dupe content penalties to sites on such a setup, even if content is substantially duplicate, as long as you keep the inbound links to the sites also segregated by country. Hosting location may also play a part. I feel that further discussion on the .co.uk and .com issue should be another thread.

Regarding your unfriendly urls... I don't know whether or not mod_rewrites of your unfriendly urls will result in any such delays. They're in the same domain, and I've seen a small number of rewrites come back with no problems. I'm wary these days, though, about any big site changes. If anyone has experience with a large number of pages on the same domain being rewritten, I'd like to hear about what happened.

projectphp - Re link popularity follow to a destination url, I won't show you the specific examples I have because they're client sites, but, as I mention above, all pages within the same domain redirected with 301s seem to credit prior inbounds. I'm talking, though, about not many pages.

Also, all domains that I've redirected have come back to former rankings, but it has taken 6 to 9 months for this to happen.

teacake23

09-23-2005, 09:02 AM

In my experience, the type of 301 that is most likely to put a site in the sandbox is a domain change.
Even if I'm redirecting to an already established domain that has not been sandboxed?

Robert_Charlton

09-23-2005, 03:26 PM

Even if I'm redirecting to an already established domain that has not been sandboxed?

This is just theorizing on my part, but I'm assuming the reason that the reason Google is applying the "sandbox" type delay to redirection is to prevent artificial inflation in spam networks. I can imagine someone going out and buying old off-topic sites and redirecting them to, say, existing pharm sites. While there are all sorts of reasons why Google should be distinguishing between your situation and the above, I'm not sure it can.

Also, more theorizing... I've often wondered whether Google might just be seeing a 301 to another domain (new or old) as simply the sudden influx of a whole bunch of links. That might be enough to raise flags and trigger one of several factors that might, in combination with others, result in what we call "the sandbox."

Re your .co.uk and your .com sites... and this belongs on a separate thread... on Google, at least, they'd be more likely to get hit as dupes if links to both were coming from the same places. If the .co.uk had its inbounds from .co.uk domains, and the .com had its inbounds coming from .com domains, Google, at least, shouldn't be treating these as dupes. Can't comment about Yahoo. You have to look at your inbound links to see if this might be causing the problem.