We all know that if we place redirects, it should be at least for a year. This helps Google to have site moves stick. But what’s the minimum waiting period? How many months are too few, too little? John Mueller of Google said that three months for Google redirect signals to be in place is not enough, and we need to keep it up for a year.


He states on Twitter,

“I would certainly recommend keeping the old domain name for a longer period. Also keeping the redirects in place for at least a year, and three months is too short for a site-move.” 

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1504759694338019342
He further added that the crawling of those URLs would slow. Google will notably slow down the crawling of things like that. Slow crawling of many URLs is still considered crawling. But we shouldn’t worry as it doesn’t cause issues with the rest of the website’s SEO.


So even if you observe Google trying to get access to these old redirected URLs, you are likely not in bad shape SEO-wise. It is just something Google usually does with its big long-term memory.


Google has expressed it will try old redirects for years and years. So if the redirect goes away, that may signal something new to Google.

Concluding Google Redirect Signals


This is the first instance when Google has officially confirmed that the Google redirect signals last forever, even after a redirect is moved. So now, if you have customers that really want to remove redirects for any reason, if the redirect has been live for more than a year, it is safe to do so from an SEO perspective focused on how search engines work. More importantly, if the redirect is removed over time because of just regular maintenance and it has been a year, you still shouldn’t worry.

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