Gary Illyes from Google posted on Twitter that you need to keep a live redirect for one year for Google search purposes. Signals from original page A to landing page B will all forward and remain true to page B even after the redirect is removed, if that redirect is active for one year.
We’ve already heard Google’s advice that keeping redirects for a year is a good practice. But this is the first time a Googer has said this is a “concrete answer” and more, that even after removing the redirect, the signals do not return to the original page but stay with the landing page.
Here is Gary’s original tweet:
raise your hand if you’ve recently asked us how long you should keep redirects in place!
I have a concrete answer now: at least 1 year.
(but try to keep them indefinitely if you can for your users).
– Gary Illyes (@methode) July 21, 2021
He then went back and forth on Twitter with dozens of questions and posted a clarification saying, “If a signal has already been given to B, it will stay there ~ no matter what.”
I like the way Patrick Stox summed it up:
So the common thread branched out a lot with a lot of questions, but I think that’s the main takeaway. 301 redirects really consolidate these signals (usually within a year of G’s first crawl) and those signals stay with the new page even after a redirect is removed. https://t.co/lGG4vZdix0
– Patrick Stox (@patrickstox) July 21, 2021
Google updated its site move help document in section six to read “Keep redirects for as long as possible, usually at least 1 year. This time frame allows Google to forward all signals to new URLs, including re-crawling and reassigning links on other sites that point to your old URLs. From a user perspective, consider keeping redirects indefinitely. However, redirects are slow for users, so try upgrading to update your own links and all high volume links from other websites to point to new URLs. “
Here are some of the back and forth as SEOs began to understand if the signals persisted even after the redirect was removed. And to be clear they do, but after the redirect is removed, new signals pointing to the original page A are not passed to the landing page of the removed redirect B. Hope that makes sense …
correct
– Gary Illyes (@methode) July 21, 2021
A, if the redirection is no longer there
– Gary Illyes (@methode) July 21, 2021
ok i see what’s confusing … i think.
if the redirect is no longer in place, A will no longer share anything with B. Anything he transmitted will remain there, but newly collected objects will not be transmitted– Gary Illyes (@methode) July 21, 2021
they will stay with B unless they are irrelevant to the content of B, in which case they are ignored / dropped
– Gary Illyes (@methode) July 21, 2021
anchors assigned to B through a redirect will not revert to A if you remove the redirect.
if A gets new anchors after removing the redirect, those will stay with A. and B can collect her own anchors from the pool she got from A while the redirect has lasted– Gary Illyes (@methode) July 21, 2021
Ugh. I AM THE CAUSE OF THE CONFUSION
Let’s see if I can fix it: if a signal has already been sent to B, it will stay there ~ no matter what.
– Gary Illyes (@methode) July 21, 2021
And technically it might take less than a year, but a year for sure:
it may be less than 1 year, but 1 year is safe.
– Gary Illyes (@methode) July 21, 2021
And the countdown begins when Google notices the redirect:
good point. since the first google crawl
– Gary Illyes (@methode) July 21, 2021
Pretty cool transparency from Google on this!
Discussion forum at Twitter.
Comments are closed.