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Page Redirection - Lost Ranking & Backlinks

bilalseo

2:02 pm on Jan 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

Folks,
I have posted the same question in Webmaster General Category, but unable to get answer. I don't know where it fits best.. but here you go:

I had a page A with good back links, but due to ugly url i have redirected page "A" to Page "B" unfortunately ranking went down badly.. also the backlinks those are previously linking to page "A" are no more there :(

my question is that:

can old backlinks for page "A" be automatically created for page "B" due to redirection, as we all know that if we redirect a page, the PR of old page is automatically shifted to a new page.. can we think the same for the above said method.

when i search for page "B" using link operator, the old back links are not shown.. also the page "A" loosing its indexing due to redirection.. thats okay! but what about backlinks are ranking? are they coming back with previous state or not?

Thanks

Bilal Qayyum

Marketing Guy

2:38 pm on Jan 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

Are both pages on the same website?

I recently merged two sites and used the Google Webmaster Tools "change of address" and implemented 301 redirects. That was last week - now link: commmand for both domains is showing the same backlinks. I expect the old domain to eventually dissapear though - right now the link: results are basically a clone of the main domain's results.

AFAIK a 301 passes *most* of the existing PageRank so I'd imagine it would also transfer backlinks as for all intents and purposes in this respect, they are the same thing.

Can take a long time for these things to sort themselves out. Remember site: and link: results are just estimations and not live data. I've seen Google take 3-4 months to remove URLs after implementing 301 redirects - some people have reported it taking longer.

When did you make the changes?

bilalseo

3:23 pm on Jan 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

yes.. they both are on the same website.. i have used 301 method using IIS.. and redirection working fine.. now no backlinks are appeared for both.. the old page A is no more in google indexing due to redirect.. page B is now live.. but having no backlinks.. also not showing on the position where it has to be.. i thought it could replace the old page i.e. page A positioning, but it hasn't been done.. :( besides, i used link operator to check out the backlinks for both pages but no backlink has yet to be appeared.. what do you say about it.. also i have changed menu links, updated xml sitemap, general sitemap, etc..

The changes have been done on 17th of this month.. and a fresh crawl date is 20th where new page i.e. page B got indexing..

Thanks

Bilal Qayyum

bilalseo

3:25 pm on Jan 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

besides, all these it is just a single page not a complete url. you were talking about some google webmasters tools..yes i know that tool, but can we do use that for a single redirect ( i mean to say child page)

Marketing Guy

3:49 pm on Jan 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

No, the new address feature in webmaster tools is to move one domain to a new one.

A simple 301 redirect is fine to change one page to a new one.

It's still early - give it some time and you'll probably see the changes reflected in the link: command.

bilalseo

4:29 pm on Jan 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

Okay! thanks for comments.

Bilal qayyum

g1smd

9:24 pm on Jan 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

When redirecting pages it can take many weeks for all factors to show in the indexing and ranking, and a lot longer for WMT to show the correct situation for these.

As long as new URLs show up quickly there's little to worry about. Old URLs can take a long time to disappear from SERPs and quite a lot longer from WMT, often 6 months.