7 replies to this topic

[michaelgrover]

We have a 301 redirect that takes people from "/healthcare/" to "/industries/healthcare/".

We are creating a new healthcare section which I want to post at "/healthcare/".

My IT people are saying that the permanent nature of the 301 has rendered the /healthcare/ space completely invisible to Google. They say that Google registers the 301 and never again checks it.

I believe that, if we take the 301 off the server and start linking to content in the /healthcare/ directory, it will start being indexed.

FWIW: there are almost no references to either space within Google now and the /industires/healthcare pages get almost no traffic.

Mike.

[Jill]

Nothing is set in stone. So I would place a guess that as long as you started linking to the new section and removed your 301's that the new healthcare section would start to get spidered and indexed ok.

But you never know until you try. We can all speculate of course!

[qwerty]

It wouldn't make sense for a search engine to treat a 301 as a message never, ever, to request a certain URL again. The message it's supposed to communicate is that a given document has been permanently moved to a new location, not that the old location is never going to contain any content.

Like Jill, I'm just speculating, but I can't believe spiders would refuse to check a new URL that you linked to just because they've been told in the past that some specific item they already know about is no longer at that location.

[Jill]

Come to think of it, I have done this before. When I buy domains I automatically 301 redirect them to highrankings.com and then somewhere down the road when I want to use them, I make them a real site.

So far, I've never had any problems with the new sites getting indexed even if they were 301'd for many years.

[michaelgrover]

Very cool. Thanks for the advice. I'll report back with my findings (if there is anything substantive to report back).

Mike.

[Randy]

The spiders will follow links, plain and simple. If there are links pointing to /healthcare/ and no 301 in place they'll index it just fine.

I've done this kind of thing countless times, often redirecting / to /store/ or /shop/ when a new shopping cart gets put into place, then taking it back to / a year or two later when the cart changes yet again. I've never seen any ill effect whatsoever.

In other words, permanent 301 redirects are only permanent when they're in place, so aren't really permanent at all.

[Scottie]

Just to agree with the others- a 301 redirect is only permanent when it exists. Once it's taken off, it's gone.

[2Clean]

....and you get a few new links pointing to the domain to start the ball rolling again...