Apache Rewrite Verse Redirect

[SuperMikeLewis]

I put in a request with my IT team to implement some 301 redirects. We recently launched a major redesign and there multiple version of some pages with different URLs.

They asked why they could not do Apache Rewrites, so it was not necessary to return an HTTP header.

I know Google's Webmasters best practices is to use 301 redirects. I am not familiar with the technical aspects of Apache et al.

Are there advantages to using a rewrite? Thanks

[coneh34d]

A rewrite passes no link juice from the old page to the new. Whereas a 301 does. In .htaccess the code is simple:

Redirect 301 /oldpage.html /newpathto/newpage.html.

Cheers!

[Gamer07]

It depends on the type of Rewrite Rule. If you have [R=301,L] at the end of the rule, it does the job and passes link juice.

[coneh34d]

This is true. The rewrites using [R=301,L] are great when it is necessary to use a regex to perform the 301's with fewer entries in your .htaccess