How many 301 redirects are too many Google?

301 redirects are seen as a pretty boring part of a website launch and as such are usually the last things to be done to a new website. The problem is that if you dont add a 301 redirect from an old site page to a new one, you get lots of awful things happening like your users ending up on a dead page, all your links sending link juice to a dead page and well, all your effort wasted on .. youve guessed it, a dead page.

Recently there has been alot of talk about Google penalising sites for adding more than 10 301 redirects, i thought this was a bit weird so i did a bit of stooping around a found some juicy Cutts for you. As with most Google myths i thought it best to listen to the real 301 redirect rules straight for the Matt Cutts mouth, so to put your minds at rest i’ve found a video of Matt explaining the “too many 301’s issue”.

Basically Google allows:

• A company to redirect all (any amount) of old company URLS to one URL
• They allow any URLS of miss spellings to the redirected to one URL
• They will find it strange if you have a massive amount of URL variations (of no relation) going in to your new URL

Matt says that lots of companies and uses Google as an example own a lot of domains and that they do need to redirect these domains from time to time. He says that vaild reasons for these redirects are that due to most domains being those with misspellings or old branding names and that these companies will not be penalised for doing this, even if the redirects do extend to over 10. He does however say that 301’s can be used as a spamming tactic and due to this any redirecting an unusual amount of URLS “im guessing hundreds” will come under Googles watchful eye, and even then action will only be taken agaisnt the site if naughtyness can be proven.

Here?s the full, 90-second video with the beautyful Mr Cutts.

Now for the 301 - 101

For those that want to know the basics and need to carry out there own 301’s.

They might not be the most glamourous part of a companies rebranding campaign, but they are an essential one. When you forget or simply dont bother to redirect your URLS, you get a nasty thing called canonicalisation, it even sounds nasty doesnt it.

Canonicalisation is when you get replicated content on separate exsisting URLS all of which are being simulatiously spidered by the search engines, you also get inbound links and traffic going to a URL that is not the one you want people to visit anymore and you also can’t stop Google indexing and choosing to show your old page URLS above the nice newly branding ones you spent loads of time promoting…YIKES.

Whats the answer? you guessed it a 301 redirect.

So what is it and who does it? A 301 redirect is basically like a little guy standing on your old site URL telling the postman that you dont live there anymore and giving them your new address, and that it.

Types of 301 redirects and links to how to the 301 redirect code and install it.

301 Redirect Using htaccess

301 Redirect Using Mod_Rewrite

301 Redirect Using IIS

301 Redirect Using ColdFusion

301 Redirect Using PHP

301 Redirect Using ASP

301 Redirect Using ASP .NET

301 Redirect Using JSP/JAVA

301 Redirect Using CGI/PERL

301 Redirect Using Ruby/Ruby on Rails

Dont try to redirect via HTML

Media Modus offer automatic 301 redirect with its hosting

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