How long for authority to transfer form an old page to a new page via a 301 redirect? (& Moz PA score update?)

[KeriMorgret]

Moz Page Authority is a separate metric. Sadly, we have no pipeline from Google where they tell us exactly what they think of a site. We update our metrics about every month, so it may take a couple of months to see authority changed to a new page in Moz.

[Dan-Lawrence]

thanks Keri

any  ideas though aprox how long G takes to update/pass authority of an old page to new one via a 301 ?

[Dr-Pete]

It can vary quite a bit. The page has to be recrawled/recached, which can take anywhere from hours to weeks, depending on how much authority the page has. That's usually the big delay. After that, Google may on occasion delay passing authority, but we don't have proof of that (there are just cases where it seems like they do).

If it's just a handful of pages, re-fetch them through Google Webmaster Tools. It never hurts to kick the crawlers.

[Dan-Lawrence]

great thanks Dr Pete !

[Dan-Lawrence]

And how long does it take for the PA on an old page to 'expire' if hasnt been transferred ?

Say if devs have missed some pages in the migration (4 weeks ago) which are now resolving in a 404, which Moz Dashboard is still reporting as having PA.

Will that authority still transfer if set up a 301 4x weeks later ?

I know we should 301 anyway, to reduce 404's, but just interested in knowing if the pages old authority expires at any point (which i'm sure it must do eventually).

Thanks

Dan

[Dr-Pete]

I think our data is getting refreshed every couple of weeks at this point, but I'm not sure if a 404 will drop a page from MozScape/OSE right away at that point. I suspect 301s may be updated more quickly, since a 404 could be a temporary issue. Once the target of a 301 gets passed the PA, the original page should lose it.

[Dan-Lawrence]

thanks Dr Pete !

What i meant was how long aprox do you have to set up a 301 for an old page resolving in a 404 before it loses its page authority ?

If you leave it a month say will it have lost the PA or will it retain it so will still transfer the PA once you 301 it say 4 weeks or more since its became a 404 page?

Or is it more likely that Moz Analytics hasnt updated yet and still attributing the url with an authority score when in fact Google is likely to have dropped its authority since been a 404 for 4 weeks ?

cheers

dan

[Dr-Pete]

Sorry, I'm a little confused - are you 301'ing to a 404? I'm not really sure I understand the situation.

[Dan-Lawrence]

No I want to 301 a page that became a 404 after devs missed redirecting during site migration where urls changed. Moz saying a few of these 404 urls still have authority. I know should 301.anyway even if they don't but are they likely to still have authority according to G ? In other words how long aftr an old page/url with authority that becomes.a 404 retains it ?

[Dr-Pete]

I wouldn't get too hung up on the Moz timeline, since that's only correlated with what Google does, to build a broader model. If Google has crawled/cached the 404 and the page actually is no longer in the index, then that page should stop inheriting and passing link equity. It can get complicated, because sometimes 404s have inbound links and other issues tied to them that can confuse the crawlers. So, I'd say it's situational.

Moz (specifically, OSE) can help you determine what links still exist to those URLs, which really should guide whether you let them stay 404s or 301-redirect them to something relevant. The other aspect of the decision is just whether something relevant exists. If you clearly have built a page to replace the old one then 301-redirect it. If the old page is something that ceased to exist for a reason, then a 404 is probably fine unless that old page had a ton of inbound links. In that case, the 404 has essentially cut off those links.

The problem is that those inbound links are still out there, so it's not that the authority has ceased to exist. It's that you've basically cut the pipe through which the authority flows.