Are social signals passed with a 301 redirect

[searchysearchy]

Hi all,

A question came up today that I don't think I've seen answered before. We hear all the time how important social sharing metrics are becoming to SEO, but what happens to the social signals of a page when it is 301 redirected? Are the social signals forwarded on in the same manner as link juice? Has anyone ever seen any experiments carried out around this before?

Thanks very much in advance for any information shared.

Cheers.

[RankSurge]

The only experience I've had is a client who was heavily involved in Social media (youtube/twitter/fb) decided to create a new brand under a new domain.

We did so, and 301'd all the social "link juice" to the new domain. We were able to keep most of the traffic that was arriving for about three weeks, then it started to fade away. Keep in mind we actively told readers about the new social profiles to follow, and convinced about 75% of the audience to follow the new profiles.

As to the link juice getting passed along, The new site only needed about 3 months to get ranked, so my take is that yes, using a 301 will send the signals along.

good luck!