Are there any negatives to channeling my links through a 301 redirect?

[Brian-M]

I'm channeling 1000's of links through another url with a 301 redirect.  I've thought this through and can't see any downside to doing this, but I want to get your opinion.

Can you see any downside to doing this? With regards to passing anchor text, PR, PA, etc?

Since this is done with sites all the time when they change urls, I can't see Google being able to penalize me for this....can you?

What do you think?

[AlanMosley]

If you are 301'ing thousandso f links, the chances are google is dissmissing them.

If you move a pae, you can 301 it top the new url, but for what reason would you have thousands of 301's pointing to a page?

I asume you have them all pointing to the home page? or a small number of pages? this will not work.

There is a video somewhere where matt cutts states that they look for this pattern.

For a 301 to be of use, the linking page and the link text should be relevant to the page it is linking to. and te lined page should not have more then a small number of redirecte pointing to it

[Brian-M]

I haven't seen evidence that Google is dismissing them....yet.

I have them pointing to different pages....i.e.....example.com, example.com/productpage1, etc. (with the example being the redirect link names)

There are several strategic advantages of doing this. Greater control over the links, the links are hidden from snoopers, etc.

However I did find the video you spoke of, and it appears that the risk is to great to continue this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70LR8H8pn1M

I also have thousands of links that don't go through the 301 so that's probably why Google hasn't picked up on this.

In searching for that video I also came across this post that says that Cutts says there is a loss of PR in 301 redirects as well. Shoot. There's another negative. http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/03/google-confirms-301-redirects-result-in-pagerank-loss.html

[AlanMosley]

Yes 301 leak link juice for sure.

Thank not the video i was thinking ofI tryed to find it but could not. I would think to yourself, is it natruakl to have all these pages 301ed to one page? if not then i would not do it.