301 redirects

[VividLime]

Hi Guys,

Question,
Lets say I have a page oldfile.php at position #2  then set-up a redirection in the following way

100 incoming external links--> oldfile.php [301 to] newfile.php

Google comes along and updates its index to newfile.php and ranking of newfile.php remains at position #2. Everything is good.

Lets say in 5months, I come along and delete oldfile.php so we have
100 incoming external links--> deleted(oldfile.php)

or

100 incoming external links-->404 error.       |||| newfile.php

Do I then loose the rankings on newfile.php.

My thinking is that now that all the external links now point to a page not found, newfile.php should loose rankings

Am I correct in my assumption?

[IM_Learner]

Yes, the listing may lose the ranking if those 100 backlinks are from worthy sites.