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The title may seem funny, but deal is this:

www.cricinfo.com was a famous and I think PR 7 site.

Few months back, they changed name to www.espncricinfo.com . www.cricinfo.com now redirects to www.espncricinfo.com .

Then why, still after two months, is the PR of www.espncricinfo.com still 3?

I am especially curious because I hear google updated their PR in the last week or so.

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    FYI, sites don't have PR, page do. Also, PR is constantly updated. The number you see in the toolbar is only updated every so often.
    – John Conde
    Commented Jan 26, 2011 at 13:15

3 Answers 3

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They seems to put a correct redirection header (moved permanently, with the new URI), but maybe at the start, they don't do it correctly (redirection with JS). So, it cause a loss in the page rank of the original site, and just a share of the page rank of the original site to the new site…

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Because sites still link to the original URL and not the new one. The number of visitors won't have dropped but links are weighted higher than visitors in the algorithm.

PR is not transferred from one site to another with any type of redirection, it always needs to build it up again. Having the right redirects is merely the quickest way for this to happen.

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  • Not true: "Use a 301 Redirect to permanently redirect all pages on your old site to your new site. This tells search engines and users that your site has permanently moved. We recommend that you move and redirect a section or directory first, and then test to make sure that your redirects are working correctly before moving all your content." --google.com/support/webmasters/bin/… It also tells search engines, 301'ed inlinks will pass PR to the new domain. Commented Jan 26, 2011 at 11:35
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    Also: "Matt Cutts: Typically, the 301 Redirect would pass PageRank. It can be a very useful tool to migrate between pages on a site, or even migrate between sites. Lots of people use it, and it seems to work relatively well, as its effects go into place pretty quickly. [...] At least for me, the 301 does work the way that I would expect it to. All the pages of interest make it over to the new site if you are doing a page by page migration, so it can be a powerful tool in your arsenal." -- stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml Commented Jan 26, 2011 at 11:39
  • You are confusing two issues. You need to read those quotes in context. Putting a 301 on a site will not directly transfer the PR or the exact search results across to the new site. Try it if you do not believe me.
    – JamesRyan
    Commented Jan 26, 2011 at 11:59
  • vertical-leap.co.uk/blog/… directly mentions that interview. It appears that 301 will only transfer PR within domains not across them
    – JamesRyan
    Commented Jan 26, 2011 at 12:09
  • "Don't do a single redirect directing all traffic from your old site to your new home page. This will avoid 404 errors, but it's not a good user experience. It's more work, but a page-to-page redirect will help preserve your site's ranking in Google" so content matching must also be a factor and suggests that you prolly don't want to coincide a redesign with a change in domain
    – JamesRyan
    Commented Jan 26, 2011 at 12:30
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I would like to chime in that you really don't need to worry about PR. Google itself says not to worry about PR. It's an older tool and was used as an indicator in the past, but it no longer carries the same weight that it used to.

To give you an example, I've been able to successfully outrank PR 6, 7, and 8 pages on a 2-word keyword phrase with 1.5M monthly hits (position 3 in Google) and the site is only PR5.

Elsewhere I've been able to rank PR 0, 1, and 2 sites for 3-word plus keyword phrases going against PR5+ sites and captured the top spot.

Long story short, focus on getting great links and building great content.

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