Is there such a thing as to many 301 redirects?

[absoauto]

Our shopping cart automatically generates the URL for each product using keywords from the product titles, because of this EVERY TIME we change titles etc. the URL changes and a 301 is automatically generated. On a site with only about 550 pages in our sitemap and for indexing we have about 550 301 redirects. Does anyone know how google handles this? This seems like a terrible ratio of 301's to indexed pages. But I don't know if Google cares about this or not.

[sprynewmedia]

301 redirects dissipate link equity in the same way a link does.  That means each one is slowly eating into the equity (PR).

Any that are created systemically would be bad design but it sounds more like this occurs when you rename a product?

In that case, why are the names changing so often?  Perhaps there is a better business process you could follow to have long last naming?  Change the page title all you like but the URL should be very long lasting by design.

[absoauto]

Hi, thanks for your response! Another issue we had was that when we switched carts we were actually able to condense our site, merge some pages which were related together into single pages. So we 301'ed the extra pages into the new condensed page which had the information from all of the current pages in it. Any chance that could have hurt our SERP's?

[sprynewmedia]

Chaining multiple 301s would be an issue (what I worry about above) but this sounds like the right process in migrating platforms.  If the old pages didn't have back links, you will be able to remove the 301s.

You could create a million redirect rules but search engines will only care about the ones they find through back links.

Perhaps your new platform is capable of simpler URLs?  Keywords in URLs and domains has lost its power so it might be better to create shorter, more stable URLs. A format like:

/products/product-name

would be ideal depending on category attributes.  If a product can be in two categories, this URL won't create content duplication issues.

[jws8118]

301 redirecting shouldn't be hurting you much unless you are getting 3 or more 301 redirects on the same URL.  When you string together a bunch of 301's you stand the chance that Google will refuse to follow it after about 3 so in that case you would be in trouble.

Other than that you should be OK and once Google reads the 301's they will eventually deindex the old pages and your 301 ratio should go down.

I agree with the earlier response though that you should be mindful about changing product titles too many .