Redirects – Are they OK with Google?

[Bryan Alan]

Question for the experts. We have a competitor that has some domain names that are essentially keywords such as sandiegomovers.net. But if you type in this domain, you get a quick redirect to their real website. They are not hosting their real website on this other domain, it is just an instant redirect.

Does this help them with Google? Does it hurt them? What purpose is this other website if it is not their real one and only has a redirect?

The reason I ask is that I have several similar domains I would like to do the same thing with but don’t know if there are any negative ramifications.

Thanks for your advice.

Bryan

[Rankenstein]

If it's a temporary move, and you plan using the sites for something else in the not-too-distant future, use a 302 redirect.

If you want to indicate a permanent redirect for these domains, use a 301 redirect. I'd pick the 301 as a preference. There was some talk about 302 redirects being exploited to steal Page Rank - this was for off-domain 302 redirects, on-domain 302 redirects were apparently fine. But that hijack stuff is something I have no first hand knowledge of, maybe someone else can chip in if they know more. So I'd pick the 301.

If the domains have Page Rank then the 301 will pass it on to the site you have redirected to, so that's good.

It won't hurt you, anyway. You could also do a meta-refresh set at 0 seconds which (generally speaking) is seen by the engines as a 301 redirect.

[Bryan Alan]

Rankenstein, thanks so much for your reply. I will follow your advise. Please keep in mind that these domains previously had no rank. I can't figure out why my competitor did this....

I have some domains I could do this with, if it somehow helps my own site in some way.

The site I am talking about is http://www.sandiegomovers.net could you tell what kind of redirect they use?

Thanks.

Bryan

[Rankenstein]

No worries. Looks like a 301 for sure. I can't see it making a difference to Google one way or the other.

[harsha22]

a 301 redirect will be good for google if you are planning to move permanently.