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This site, for example, is located at http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums - However, it can also be accessed via its domain name www.techtalkforums.com

If someone links to www.techtalkforums.com, and is forwarded server-side over to daniweb.com, which domain name would get the PR increase? I know that PR is on a page-by-page basis, and not domain-by-domain basis.

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Short answer: when a visitor/link goes to an old hostname that is resolved via a server‑side permanent redirect to the new site, Google will generally consolidate the link signals onto the final (destination) URL — the destination becomes the canonical URL in search results. (developers.google.com)

Nuance: modern Google can follow many kinds of redirects and will often pass link signals, but it expects a clean, relevant mapping. Avoid long redirect chains and avoid mass redirects from many unrelated pages to a single page (Google may treat those as soft‑404s and not transfer value). Temporary redirects and client‑side tricks are less reliable; still, server‑side permanent redirects are the recommended method for a domain move. (developers.google.com)

Practical checklist (apply these when moving/forwarding a domain):

  • Verify redirects at scale and spot chains (use command‑line checks or a crawler).
  • Verify both old and new properties in Search Console and submit a Change of Address for domain moves; also submit the new sitemap and update internal links.
  • Keep redirects in place (at least months; preferably a year or more) and avoid framed/masked forwarding — masking doesn’t pass SEO value and can cause indexing problems.
    Quick test example (run from a shell against your old host, replacing old.example.com):
    # show response headers (status and Location)
curl -I http://old.example.com/

    (developers.google.com)

Practical outcome for this thread: — a proper server‑side permanent redirect is the right approach to consolidate PR to the daniweb URLs. ’s earlier claim is misleading if a correct server‑side redirect is in place; and were right to question the simple answer — the redirect type and mapping decide how signals are consolidated. (developers.google.com)

Member Avatar for Caislander

techtalkforums.com would be the site to get a pr increase no others.

Gemsergio,

Is that piece of information available somewhere ? because my understanding for a while now is completely opposite, I understood that if the redirection was done serverside that the gain would be made by the directed to domain, if the redirection was done client side the would indeed go to the, in this case www.techtalkforums.com domain.

Just Curious :)

Member Avatar for Dani

Caislander, that is what I thought as well. That was actually one of my primary reasons for grouping all of my sites - techtalkforums.com and dazah.com (and any future projects) under the daniweb.com domain. This way, I would only have to deal with PR for one enormous site and they would all share each other's traffic.

Member Avatar for Caislander

csgal,

Well I am now hoping that is true, since I have advised clients on setups similar to yours based on that belief !:eek:

Member Avatar for Dani

I'm doing the redirection by adding a Redirect Permanent to httpd.conf (for Apache)

Member Avatar for Hero Doug

I *think* how it works is when the spider is parsing the links it just records them, where they are coming from and where their going.

Member Avatar for Dani

The following is an exerpt from the SitePro News e-newsletter. It's usually relatively trustworthy:

First, search engines often either penalize or downgrade sites that use immediate URL forwarding, especially from a home page. URL forwarding suggests doorway pages (a search engine no-no) or affiliate URL's forwarding to an affiliate program site, or the worst of all scenarios, cloaking software on your server. You may not be doing any of these things, but the robots don't know, don't care, and don't index your site, plain and simple.

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