Matt Cutts Confirms 301 PageRank Dilution To Be A Myth

[NathanielB]

Yesterday (25th Feb) Matt Cutts confirmed that "The amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link." on a new youtube video What percentage of PageRank is lost through a 301 redirect? - YouTube

So according to Mr Cutts a 301 redirect will pass the same amount of PageRank as a link, meaning the old myth of it being better to place a link on a page rather then redirect it is not true.

Personally I have thought this for some time, but even with Matt "confirming" this I would still take it with a pinch of salt as with anything coming from google to do with seo and pagerank etc, but hay I don't trust anyone in the position to say what they like when they like about the biggest company in control of the internet as we know it lol

What are your thoughts?
Do you think Matt Cutts is telling the truth?
Do you think he just did the video to stop people from asking the same question?

[Test-ok]

Yea I think he's telling it like is is, because they can't really tell the difference...a link is a link, like it's always been. It's all about the detection of the spammy ones...which their working on.

[whiterabbit]

the way I originally heard this was that when you 301 redirect a page there is a tiny tiny bit of link equity that is lost...I think that this was one of those ideas that floated around but you didn't just change your strategy because of it..it just made you a little more reluctant to get overtly 301 redirect happy, which is probably a good thing anyway......I don't think it is a lie...but if find myself looking for the truth behind truth and psychoanalyzing what matt says probably more than its healthy for me "what does matt reallllllly mean by x?"

[SEO_AM]

For some reason, I am not going to search for it, I remember Matt in an interview answer somewhere state that there was a tiny bit of lost juice in a 301. Can't swear to it, but that is my memory. Either his or my memory is in error.

[gazzahk]

Yep SEOAM he did.

Eric Enge: Let’s say you move from one domain to another and you write yourself a nice little statement that basically instructs the search engine and, any user agent on how to remap from one domain to the other. In a scenario like this, is there some loss in PageRank that can take place simply because the user who originally implemented a link to the site didn't link to it on the new domain?

Matt Cutts: That's a good question, and I am not 100 percent sure about the answer. I can certainly see how there could be some loss of PageRank. I am not 100 percent sure whether the crawling and indexing team has implemented that sort of natural PageRank decay, so I will have to go and check on that specific case. (Note: in a follow on email, Matt confirmed that this is in fact the case. There is some loss of PR through a 301).

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021832.html

What is more interesting is now he is suggesting that there is no dilution of juice via linking. ie if a page has a single link out the full amount of juice from that page is transferred. This would mean doing a 301 redirect is not even necessary. A single page could be left up on the old site/page with a single link out from the page and virtually 100% of the benefit that page is getting is being transferred. It may be better (does not seem worse juice wise and may loose less links over time to original site) to leave a page telling people the site has been moved that redirecting people to another site/page….


What is more interesting is now he is suggesting that there is no dilution of juice via linking. ie if a page has a single link out the full amount of juice from that page is transferred

[NewDelhiSEO]

I think Matt is right on both counts. Here is why I think so.

Page rank or Link Juice which ever flows from one page to another is subjected to a dampening factor of 0.85.
So a page with PR 10 (I wish I have one) will only be able to push another page to PR 9 (rounded up from 8.5) in theory.

But at the same time a 301 redirect would pass on all the PR and Link juice to the target.
Which would mean a page with PR 10 would pull any page to PR10 if its 301ed.

Now that makes a 301 more powerful than a link.
So if mat Cutts says
1. The 301 redirect benefits have been diluted a tiny winy bit. (may be down to 85% or whatever figure)
2. The 301 is equivalent to a link
Both of them make sense to me.

[NathanielB]

I guess my memory is still quite good. Was Matt lying then or is he lying now?

I don't think its a case of him lying either time, in the archive that Gazz quotes Matt was reported to have updated his answer with:

There is some loss of PR through a 301

And in the latest report in that video Matt confirms:

The amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link

Meaning he has simply added to the archived information in saying that the amount of pagerank lost and passed is apparently the same, so if we take his word for it he wasn't lying in either of the posts.


@NewDelhi, Not sure where you got that 301 redirects will pass on 100% link juice or pagerank? Read the quote again, Cutts has said that a link and a 301 redirect will be exactly the same, not that a 301 will pass 100%

[NewDelhiSEO]

@NewDelhi, Not sure where you got that 301 redirects will pass on 100% link juice or pagerank? Read the quote again, Cutts has said that a link and a 301 redirect will be exactly the same, not that a 301 will pass 100%

Oh, sorry for the confusion. I meant to say.
But at the same time a 301 redirect would pass on all the PR and Link juice to the target if it were to pass higher (or 100%) value to the target.
Which would mean a page with PR 10 would pull any page to PR10 if its 301ed.

[lenhuhiep]

301 redirect . Get page PR10 pull any page PR 10 ??