Does PageRank Affect 301 Redirect Links?

So, you’ve built a new website, but you don’t want to lose all the hard SEO work you’ve done on the site you’re replacing? There are a few options to send visitors to your new site. The most common method is the simplest technique to guide a visitor to a new page — the “301 redirect” link. After Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, there has much concern and debate that 301 redirects may not retain the same PageRank value as normal, regular links from other pages. In an effort to provide clarity, Google’s Matt Cutts recently addressed the question of “What percentage of PageRank is lost through a 301 redirect?”

 

 

Here is a link to the Google video:

 

Although he does not reveal any actual percentages, the answer, as Matt states, is that “the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is almost exactly/currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link. They are utterly the same.”

 

So the short answer, based on Matt’s response, is there is no added penalty for using a 301 vs. a regular link. Now, if you have multiple 301’s that create a chain linking to other 301’s and eventually to the page you intend a visitor to land on, you may see a deeper chunk of your PageRank disappear. There are variables and scenarios where Matt’s answer may not apply, but the issue was most people felt that 301 redirects pass LESS PageRank than normal links, and we’ve learned that is simply not true.

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