Google: How Soon Can You Remove 301 Redirects?

Jan 18, 2019 - 7:57 am 16 by

Google Patience

We've covered the topic of how long Google wants you to keep 301 redirects in place here numerous times. John Mueller was asked the question again and this time he said on Twitter "After a few years the old URLs are often no longer accessed & you can drop those redirects."

This is similar to his advice about being patient when removing 301 redirects and to leave them up and running for over a year.

This time he said you should try to keep them up for a "few years" not after you first put them in place but after the old URLs are seen to no longer have been accessed. John Mueller then said a bit later on Twitter to keep them for "at least a year."

Here are the tweets:

Why keep the redirects for so long? (1) For users who may click on a link and get sent to a dead URL instead of being redirected to the new URL. (2) So Google can pass PageRank and other link signals from an old URL to a new URL.

I have redirects in place for over 15 years already. :)

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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