When asked how long 301 redirects should be kept in place after a site move, Google says a year is the minimum recommended time.
Why a full year?
Because a major change, such as a site move, takes Google time to process.
If the redirects are in place for less than a year, Google may not crawl the links frequently enough to recognize that the site has been permanently relocated.
This topic is highlighted in the most recent Ask Googlebot video series on YouTube.
How Long Should I Maintain a Site Redirect?
In response to the above question, Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller first clarifies that 301 redirects are appropriate in this case.
On their websites, people use two types of redirects: 301s and 302s.
A 301 redirect tells Google that a page has been permanently moved, whereas a 302 redirect tells Google that a page has been temporarily moved.
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Because a site move is a permanent change, the 301 redirect is the best option.
Given the web’s constant evolution, you may wonder if “permanent” truly means “permanent.”
Mueller claims:
“At Google we try to reprocess all pages at least every few months. Most pages are checked more often. However, the amount of crawling is limited and there are many pages that we’d like to crawl, so we have to prioritize.
When a URL changes our systems need to see the change in the form of a redirect for at least a few times in order to record that change.
To be certain that a redirect has been seen a few times, we recommend keeping the redirect in place for at least one year.”
It’s not as simple as simply redirecting the old domain to the new domain when it comes to site migrations.
Each individual page on the old site must be 301 redirected to the corresponding page on the new site.
If you do not intend to keep any pages from the old site, you do not need to redirect them to a new URL.
It’s also critical to update any external links that refer to the old URLs.
To be clear, leaving redirects in place for more than a year is perfectly acceptable. You are free to leave them up for as long as you want.
A year is the absolute minimum amount of time to keep 301 redirects in place to mitigate the potential negative impact of a site move on your SEO.
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