301 Redirect PageRank Dilution Myth Resurfaces

I’m full of back and forth this week, as Google yet again makes the point that 301 Redirects don’t dilute PageRank.

And yet again, a number of webmasters are keen to decry Google’s message-bearers – and they have yards of stats to “prove” it.

I’m kind of in the ‘Google’s right, but I don’t think they’re being wholly accurate’ camp, which is full of marshmallow, twinkly stars and the like.

Click the link to read about the dilution row rearing its head yet again.

#SEO #SEONews #Redirects #SiteMigrations #SEOMyths

Summary:

• Google has been pretty insistent the last few years that 301 (or any other redirect) don’t dilute Page Rank.
• Well, they had to get out the “Don’t be silly” hammer again when the topics reared its head once more.
• Lots of people are very sure it dilutes PageRank, but also not sure what other signals it might dilute.
• PageRank is not diluted by redirects, says Google. However, it does leave the door open for other “signals” to be diluted.

Actions to take:

1. Redirect away! 301 or 302, it doesn’t seem to matter to Google in terms of PageRank. It may matter in terms of equity.
2. Remember there is a maximum of 5 hops which Google will follow.
3. Make sure you redirect 1 to 1, like for like wherever possible. to maintain as much  equity the page accumulates from Google’s signals.
4. Click here to contact me to discuss how to best manage redirects for transfer of as much equity as possible..

Discussion:

For an awfully long time, I’ve been talking about equity, or value for a URL rather than PageRank. In most instances, if you redirect 1 to 1, like for like, from a to b, then all value is transferred across.

If you redirect from a “red widgets” page to a completely unrelated “yellow fish” page, then almost no value is transferred across. This is because value is likely to be related to relevancy in these areas (and relevancy is more important than any other value any SEO talks about). That may come from on-page signals, or it may come from the accuracy of the pages sending signals.

In many ways, this makes absolute sense. Google has moved very much to a “current state” view of the world. If you’ve changed URLs and have redirected them, but the content is the same, why wouldn’t Google still want to surface that content in search rather than applying some arbitrary algorithm to dilute a mythical number?

Value is found in the relevancy of pages and content linking to your page, and the content residing on the page surfaced. Remember that.

More info:

• John Mu on Google+ (He’s the only one).
• Gary Illyes gets a bit surprised by 301 Discussion
• Google Gives Incorrect 301 Redirect Advice

Return to Top

I recently wrote about how Google’s Mobile First is Not Mobile Friendly. Read it now.

Return to Top

• Gary Illyes got a bit miffed when someone claimed to have proof that PageRank dilutes with 301s.
• It doesn’t. Other signals might well, but PageRank doesn’t seem to.
• And even if it did, we couldn’t compute it to prove it.
• Move on :-)
• Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
• Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
• Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.

Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.

Return to Top