How long should I keep the 301 redirect file

[KBC]

We've setup an new site and many pages don't exist anymore (clean up done). But for many of them we have new pages with new url's. We've monitored the 404 and have now many URL's redirected with 301 (apache file).

How long should we keep this in place? Checking all links manually to see of new url is in place of the old url (in google) is too much work.

tx!

[GastonRiera]

Hi KBC,

there I dont see that the follow up on the URL update on SERPs should be a problem. Have you tried using 'site:yoursite.com' query?

About the 301 redirect, I wuold keep it as many time as possible. There will be no harm at all when all URL are updated.

Hope this helps you.

[KBC]

Can one have to many 301's? Can list be too long?

[EGOL]

My 301s will still be up when I attend my own funeral.

I am old enough that the web will still exist, but for you maybe not.

I need to add an item to my business succession plan about 301s.  Thanks for the reminder.

[EGOL]

Some people place all of their 301 in the root .htaccess folder.   I think that is a bad idea.

Mine are in subfolders, as deep within them as possible.  I believe that reduces work on the server.

[GastonRiera]

Im with you EGOL.
Keep the redirect files as deep as possible.

And no, there's no limit on the quantity of 301's

[KBC]

Not possible here, since the structure changed for 100%

[Mobilio]

This is also bad idea.

.htaccess have parameter with enable or disable subdirectory .htaccess override - AllowOverride. And this can kill all Apache performance! Why?

Let you browse /index.html Apache will parse .htaccess, execute rules and return /index.html. This is normal case scenario - with one .htaccess. But if you browse /subdir1/subdir2/subdir3/subdir4/subdir5/blah.jpg this is BAD! Apache will parse /.htaccess then /subdir1/.htaccess then /subdir1/subdir2/.htaccess .... subdir1/subdir2/subdir3/subdir4/subdir5/.htaccess and then blah.jpg.

Remember! Apache doesn't cache .htaccess. They're loading, parsing and executing on each resource loaded. And when you access 2nd resource - they make this over and over.

It's much better if you make static configuration in httpd.conf because this configuration is loading on startup only and there you can define <site><directory><resource>for each of them.</resource></directory></site>

Other modern webservers also used static config - nginx, lighttpd, etc.

[4RS_John]

Unless there's a reason to take the 301s down, don't.

If you don't want to have to wade through them all when you're editing your .htaccess file you could monitor your server logs which should show all requests & responses your server receives & sends. When no requests for a URL, (and therefor no 301 responses happen), come in for some long period of time, (a month? 6 months? a year?), then you may be able to safely remove the 301 directive from your .htacess, (or wherever you configure your 301s).