Defining redirect standards

[Matt Carter]

We are starting to see an increase in departments moving URLs.  Part of this is a result of many old departmental websites still being hosted at a /~department url. The issue we have recently been discussion is how to best handle redirects for these pages.  In some cases it is easy when the site moves the same content to a new URL and we can easily do a 301 redirect that maps all content to the new URL.

The questions arises about what best approach to take when the move also involved a new website. Of course the ideal solution is to 301 every page to its equivalent. However we have found some larger sites don't want to go through the process of setting up hundreds of redirects. We have come up with a list of scenarios and I wanted to put it out for input.  Some of these are bad ideas and some might have split reactions.  Let me know what you think.  The idea is we want to come up with a small list so we can say, "Do x.  If you can't do x then do y.  If you can't do y then do z..."

 

Scenario	Response Code	From (old)	To (new)	Note
1	301	All	Equivalent pages	404 everything else
2	301	All	Equivalent pages	301 everything else to root
3	301	Top n pages	Equivalent pages	404 everything else
4	301	Top n pages	Equivalent pages	301 everything else to root
5	301	Home page	root	404 everything else
6	301	All	root
7	404	All	NA

Your thoughts and experience is greatly appreciated.

-Matt