: How does bing-bot( is that the right spider-name? ) and googlebot interpret 301 redirect? I've been looking for documentation on how the Microsoft and Google bots interpret 301 redirects. It

@Kristi941

Never redirect like this using JavaScript. It's bad for a variety of reasons. Stick to the standards and send a 301 redirect via an HTTP header. Otherwise you risk sending the wrong message, or no message, to the search engine and then you run the risk of being de-indexed, penalized, or somehow losing value that you have rightly accrued (e.g. link popularity).

All you can do is to do things the right way and then hope anyone interacting with your site is doing things the right way, too. If they aren't you can try to accommodate them if you know what they are doing wrong but always default to the right way first. That way you are future proof and cover the majority of use cases.

FYI, found this about Bing and 301 redirects


Bing will (eventually) deindex pages
that have been 301ed and re-index the
new page.


Google will de-index the original page and index the new page and transfer most of the PageRank and other value the original page accrued over time. A small amount of that value is lost when the redirect is done. Probably to prevent abuse of the system.

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