I was just reading an old post about 301 redirects and then made the mistake of trying to do more research on other sites -- a little lost now!

My question is whether there are any consequences for removing a 301 re-directed domain name. For example, the incredibly coveted KoitzGroup.com (!) is my domain name. I also have the domain SeeThisHome.info that is 301 redirected to KoitzGroup.com. I have quite a few others domains 301 redirected to different areas pages too.

If I wanted to remove SeeThisHome.info or any of the area pages "301 redirected" domains for some reason, what happens? That is, would someone be so kind to explain to me what Google “sees” when one 301 redirects a domain, then takes it away and any other considerations? (i.e. losing keywords in the removed domain? Does that even matter at all? Ehhhh...)

I'll leave this one to the pros (if i made some semblance of sense). Thanks everyone...
- Kevin

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Kevin Koitz, from The Koitz Group @ Long & Foster

Washington DC Real Estate | Bethesda Real Estate | Bethesda Real Estate News |

Serving the Washington DC Metropolitan area including Montgomery County MD, Washington DC, & Northern Virginia

Makes perfect sense: and the answer is "depends"

First of all there is nothing wrong with adding then deciding to remove 301 redirected domains, just so that's clear.

However, there is an instance where a 301 is a benefit to SERPS, and that instance is if the domain being redirected has backlinks / pagerank of it's own, as Google will recognize the 301 (Permanantly moved) redirect and credit your new domain (Or existing domain) with some extra love - later if you remove it, you remove the love

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Want to save up to 50% off Real estate webmasters product websites & common upgrades? Check out my latest blog post regarding our end of the year sale.

I get removing the love. I just today directed a few domain names to my housebeautifulnj.com site (I hope). They are new domain names that went no where and had NO LOVE .... so I assume it doesn't make a mess. ?? Sorry if I am taking it a bit off topic...that is hard for me. If you knew me you would understand that part more!

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Susan Zanzonico
Morristown NJ Real Estate
Chatham NJ Real Estate
Summit NJ Real Estate
Weichert, Realtors
Morris, Union and Essex County NJ Real Estate

Kevin, how many different domains are you 301 redirecting to your site?

301 redirects are the appropriate tool when changing urls, changing domains, etc. However, pointing a bunch of domains at one site can get you in trouble. There was a well know directory that was banned for this. They kept acquiring domains and 301 redirecting them all to their directory to take advantage of the links.

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John Allen
Realtor®/Broker
Allen Real Estate Services, Inc.
Sarasota, Florida
Representing buyers and sellers of fine Sarasota real estate.

Kevin,

Here is a little more detail. Matt Cutts gets into the conversation about 3/4 way down the page.

301 redirecting a bunch of domains at your site is at the least "grey area." There are other interviews where he says this could be considered a link scheme.

wolf-howl.com/google/hey-matt-cutts-how-about-a-domain-redirection-and-consolidation-post/

Matt Cutts:

"If you buy typos (of your domain), I’d 301 them to your main site. Even things that you win in UDRP arbitration can be 301′ed. For example, if someone bought porngoogle.com and Google won it in UDRP, it would make sense to 301 it to your main domain.

What I *wouldn’t* recommend is try to register unrelated expired domains in an attempt to get those pre-existing links to count toward your domain. I would also avoid registering-and-301′ing typos of competitors’ domains or other completely unrelated domains.

See for example my dialog with Jeffrey on this page: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...71411647145471 where I talk about a concrete example. In fact, I’ll include just a little bit of one comment:

“If you look at it from a search engine’s point of view, we don’t just see avivadirectory.com. We see that plus the other 9-10 directories. And 10 directories, one of which is an expired domain, starts to look a little more serious to us than just the one directory."

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John Allen
Realtor®/Broker
Allen Real Estate Services, Inc.
Sarasota, Florida
Representing buyers and sellers of fine Sarasota real estate.

John -
Many thanks for the heads up and concern. How did that directory take advantage of links (basically stuffing the urls?). It's such an interesting issue - both the consuer's/programmer's/webmaster's application of the "301" and, from the little research I did yesterday, the potential for the lowest ranked of several urls - all "301"d to the the same page - to be the only one indexed for that specific month or couple week span. G has seemed to work out the angles, but still seem to seems to take a few months after the 301 to recognise the 2nd link.

Right now I have 2 urls pointed to my homepage (both from my previous website). Then a few others. One I use as the landing page for my Northwest Washington DC section -- NWDCLIving.com. I also have 1 pointing to our big farm, Downtown Bethesda -- DowntownBethesdaLiving.com. And one other pointed towards another subdivision where we do a lot of work, Chevy Chase View >> ChevyChaseView.net. It was my impression that as long as the "alias" is relevant to the original link (NWDCLiving "301"d to [url]http://www.koitzgroup.com/northwest-washington-dc-real-estate and you didn't go crazy with dozens of new urls a day, you were fine. What do you guys and gals (Susan, looking forward to hearing back from you again on this string, and yes, you made me laugh!) think? Another practical side is if we have a couple listings in those particular areas, it's a great way to get people to the "right place" (open house, broker open...). We point them straight to the url from Craigslist, Washington Post etc...

Thanks again, John. Again, love to hear your thoughts and I still have a couple questions I hope we can flush out through the course of this string.

Have a good one...
- K

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Kevin Koitz, from The Koitz Group @ Long & Foster

Washington DC Real Estate | Bethesda Real Estate | Bethesda Real Estate News |

Serving the Washington DC Metropolitan area including Montgomery County MD, Washington DC, & Northern Virginia

Hmmm...sorry for the broken link (I'll fix that!) -- and really interesting, John. Thanks a lot for sharing that one with me. Well, when you're done reading my post, let me know what you think. I know it's hard to gauge intent, but do I get anything from the 301s (other than the two from my old site). The other few are bought straight from godaddy and forwarded on and their urls very closely resemble the "originals". But I get it... Thanks again, John...
- Kevin

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Kevin Koitz, from The Koitz Group @ Long & Foster

Washington DC Real Estate | Bethesda Real Estate | Bethesda Real Estate News |

Serving the Washington DC Metropolitan area including Montgomery County MD, Washington DC, & Northern Virginia