301 Redirect can cause traffic drop

I just read a very interesting information about The 301 Redirect Headache from Search Engine Watch Blog. It says that moving web pages that have been indexed by search engines to a new URL using a 301 permanent redirect can cause serious dips in traffic once the search engines discover that the old page has moved

Other than that Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable highlighted a discussion at Google Groups in which Google’s Adam Lasnik claimed that it only takes them a couple of weeks for things to smooth out

Here’s what Adam Lasnik said at Google Groups Discussion for Webmaster :

1. There’s no universal/intentional sandbox. But, as Matt has noted and MRG has quoted (hey, that kinda rhymes), there are algorithms which have a sandbox-like effect on some sites
2. 301s pass PR and related signals appropriately. Usually takes a couple of weeks for things to smooth out, though

And here’s what MRG said at that Google Groups :

The only thing I remember about the “sandbox effect” was something said by Matt Cutts when he made a reference regarding how webmasters go about promoting/marketing their sites. It was implied that the more you try to get traffic in other ways, the more Google will notice it and this alone could override the effect. It was also implied that the true goal of whatever had been put in place wasn’t to reproduce such ’sandbox’ but that this came about as a side effect, which make them very pleased

So the conclusion from the above discussion is, if you’re thinking on buying a new domain and want to redirect your previous domain to the new one, you’ll notice some traffic drops. Because it takes couple of weeks to pass PR to the new domain. Although in reality in takes couple of months or more to pass that PR to your new domain

A good example is .. if you previously using wordpress dot com subdomain (this is the default) and at later time you decided to bought / use the wordpress dot com domain mapping features, you’ll notice traffic drop