How to 301 redirect...

I hear alot about using 301 redirects so that the search engines can recognize moved or obsolete pages. I have some questions:

1. Do all servers support 301 redirect?
2. What is the affect of PR from the old page to the redirected page?
3. How about links...what happens to them?
4. What does the 301 code look like...where does it go?
5. Does the 301 have to redirect to a page in the same site or can it go to a different domain?
6. Does the browser load the redirected page then go to the new page...or is it done server side?

Here are some common scripting redirect methods:

php:
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.domain.com" );

asp:

Response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"
Call Response.AddHeader ("Location","http://www.domain.com")
Response.End


cfm:
<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://domain/">


1. I think so...
2. PR is for a page, it does not transfer to a different(or same, but moved) page. Each has their own PR, but can be affected by another page's PR by linking. A 301 re-direct is not a link, but a re-direct to a different (possibly different)page.
3. The SERVER may remove the old links, or update them.
4. See above. It goes on the page that moved, or was replaced.
5. The page can be anywhere.
6. The server loads the page and sends to code to the browser. It has to be scripted as far as I know. On a UNIX server you can put the code into a HTML page and have it processed as PHP and generate the re-direct.

Thanks,
Chris
http://www.best-free-search-engine-list.com

Hey Chris..great info thanks

If I have a page that is using variable to pull content from a DB..what would be the best way to redirect. The current page url is like this mypage.asp?id=1 and id gose from 1 to 10. In the end I want 10 pages with different names ie: page1.asp to page10.asp...I will embed the variables into the pages so that mypage.asp?id=1 will be page1.asp.

How do I redirect...do I just do the old mypage.asp and redirect it to one the ten new pages...or should I write a script to get the id and then redirect to the appropriate page1 to page10?

I think you should write a script in the mypage.asp that will take the variable and then return the correct 301 error message that will re-direct the visitor to the correct page.

So you will need a "case" statement, or a series of if-then statements to take care of this.

Chris

Thanks Chris...the scripting thing is easy...I just want to make sure I do it right so I don't accidently wipe out all my pages. I have stopped passing variables via the url since google doesn't really like those pages....they get in the index but they rank very low...even if I link them directly from the index of the site. Not to mention when I create seperate pages I get the benefit of using some descriptive terms in the page name....a big boost on yahoo.

If you are thinking Google does not like those pages because of the URL I doubt that is the problem. Linking off the home page is a good idea.

But unless your variables have some form of "id" like sessionid or prod-id then you should be ok. I have heard that the "id" is a flag that a session id is being used and that may cause problems.

And your right about using descriptive names for the files. That can help, but more important is good optimization in the titles and descriptions. If you have done the keyword research, then that should be easy.

"But unless your variables have some form of "id" like sessionid or prod-id then you should be ok. I have heard that the "id" is a flag that a session id is being used and that may cause problems. " 100% the cause...I used id=X I do have other pages that use type=land and they do ok...so I guess it's not a blanket statement that google doesn't like dynamic urls...just some types.

"And your right about using descriptive names for the files. That can help, but more important is good optimization in the titles and descriptions. If you have done the keyword research, then that should be easy." ...yes you need all the regular seo stuff...but when all else is equal this can be the factor that puts you ahead of the competition....particularly in engines other than google.

I was just wondering. if you got a cloaking script that detected an ip address, set it to display a 301 redirect, set it to googlebot's ip, then had it redirect to a site thats really good in the search engine rank. would google rank your page address next to it in the search engine.(im thinking probably not but apparently your url then gains that sites pr even if its not going to show up in an engine it could make a valuable link page or directory. everyone would want to link to u if u had a pr7 or so.)
Thoughts comments and money welcome.

I doubt that would work. If any search engine is going to detect cloaking it's going to be Google.

By the way, PR is not as important as everyone thinks. You can get more traffic with good content than you can with good PR, at least up to a point. The thing is that it is easier to get good content than it is to get really good PR.

And if a site has good content and optimization, it's going to get traffic even with a low PR....

I doubt google would penalise you for this behaviour. Why? Because if they did notice, they would be too busy rolling on the floor, laughing at you.

Let me explain. The url below is a stright 301 page. Look at the url shown below. Click the link and see what your url bar looks like.
http://www.caffeinefuelled.net/lesson1.php

it is a REDIRECT. Google would see the other site's url, whilst ignoring yours. Therefore anyone linking to your site would be effectively linking to the <b>other</b> site as far as <b>google</b> was concerned. This means that you just give the other site any pagerank bonuses that you would have recieved from the incoming links. In fact, the PR of your site would mean nothing anyway, because your site would not be visible to google. At all. No visible site == no SERPS. Google would not need to penalise you, because you would have already penalised yourself.

Feel free to try it though

"The thing is that it is easier to get good content than it is to get really good PR." But once you get that great content people will want to link to it...so then you get the PR anyway.

I found this on googel webmaster tips:
We cannot manually change your listed address at the exact time you move to your new site. There are steps you can take to make sure that your transition goes smoothly, however. Google listings are based in part on our ability to find your site by following links from other web pages. To preserve your ranking, you will want to inform any sites that currently link to your pages of your change of address. As long as the links change as you move your site over to a new location, your PageRank should not be adversely affected.

Does that mean that a 301 re-direct by itself is useless if you don't get all your links updated...seems it would be easier to get a new domain and new links and just leave the old one alone....am I missing something here?

The 301 is generally used when a page changes. It does two things: 1) It re-directs any user to the new content, and 2) It sends back a message that the content has moved. Many search engines will used this message to update their index.

If a site is linking to you, and is linking to a specific page, then their link should be changed and you will have to contact them to make sure this gets done.

I think it makes more sense to get the links updated, since these people already want to lnk to you, and not start all over again.