301 Redirect Showing Up as Thousands Of Backlinks?

[Sandicliffe]

Hi Everyone,

I'm currently doing quite a large back link audit on my company's website and there's one thing that's bugging me.

Our website used to be split into two domains for separate areas of the business but since we have merged them together into one domain and have 301 redirected the old domain the the main one.

But now, both GWT and Majestic are telling me that I've got 12,000 backlinks from that domain?  This domain didn't even have 12,000 pages when it was live and I only did specific 301 redirects (ie. for specific URL's and not an overall domain level 301 redirect) for about 50 of the URL's with all the rest being redirected to the homepage. Therefore I'm quite confused about why its showing up as so many backlinks - Old redirects I've done don't usually show as a backlink at all.

UPDATE: I've got some more info on the specific back links. But now my question is - is having this many backlinks/redirects from a single domain going to be viewed negatively in Google's eyes? I'm currently doing a reconsideration request and would look to try and fix this issue if having so many backlinks from a single domain would be against Google's guidelines.

Does anybody have any ideas? Probably somthing very obvious.

Thanks!

Sam

[Linda-Vassily]

My redirects from old domains show up as back links, which makes sense--it is a case of a link from one domain to a different domain. So if you redirected all of those pages to your new site, you'd see a lot of links. As far as why it would be more pages than you had, take a look at the links and see what they are. Maybe you had different versions of pages that are showing up as separate links?

[Sandicliffe]

Hi Linda,

It seems only some 301 redirects show up on my websites backlink profile. Perhaps this is an issue with these 301 redirects thats causing it, rather than the backlink software!

I've done some more digging in terms of the specific URL's and I now have more of an idea why there are so many there. My question now is; Is having so many URL's redirected like this a negative thing in Google's eyes?

Thanks

Sam

[Linda-Vassily]

I sincerely hope not, as I am about to redirect most of my main website.

It is a common thing for websites to do a wholesale redirect of pages, whether to change domains or better structure the site. Matt Cutts said a few years back that there is no problem with this, even with sites of 100,000 pages and I have not heard anything to contradict this.

[Sandicliffe]

Thanks for your clarification on that Linda, that does make sense I just had to be sure!

in relation to my earlier point about not all redirects showing as backlinks, I found out earlier that our developer has been migrating our old domains over to a new server (which subsequently removed the 301 redirect) and therefore the reason some of my 301 redirects weren't showing as backlinks was because they had been removed! (I've put them back in place now). So thanks for your response as It encouraged me look further into this, resulting in the above findings!

Sam

[Linda-Vassily]

It is always a good idea to work closely with your developer when making changes like this. I'm glad you got everything figured out!