301 redirect to a temporary URL

[sichristie]

Hi there,

What would happen if I redirected a set of URLs to a temporary URL structure. And then a few weeks later redirected the original URLs and temporary URLs to the final permanent URLs?

So for example:A -> B for a few weeks.
then: A->C and B->C

where:
C is the final destination URL.
B is the temporary destination
A is the original URL.

The reason we are doing this is the naming of the URLs and pages are different, and we wish to transition our customers carefully from old to new.

I am looking for a pure technical response. 
Would we lose link juice? Does Google care if we permanently redirect to a set of 'temporary' URLs, and then permanently redirect to a set of what we think are permanent URLs?

Cheers,

Simon

[MoosaHemani]

If I would be at your place I would prefer to live with the basic rule. The rule is:

-          301 is a permanent redirection which means the link juice will flow to the new URL

-          302 is a temporary redirection which means the people will redirect to the new page but link juice will not flow.

Use 301 to only the final destination so that your link juice does not loss from one to another redirection.

So if A to B is a test use 301 and B to C is finally where you want your user to land use 301. Once you have the final URLs redirect all to the final destination and this time it will be 301 redirection.

Hope this helps!

[Andy.Drinkwater]

With a 301, you always lose some link juice, but just make sure you don't get into a situation where you are redirecting from a redirect. This can completely strip all link juice you have and cause you issues.

-Andy

[AlanMosley]

When you finally get your urls sorted out, google will sort it out also. in the mean time you may loose ranking, but in the end all will be sorted.