Will using re-directs harm my ranking

[HVDB]

What do you guys think..

Since we're planning to work with a new URL structure we'll use a re-direct on the old URL.

Is there any chance using re-directs will affect our Search Engine rankings?

Thanks in advance

[bbonline]

I see a big disadvantages with re-direction.

-It discourage Search Engines from indexing your web pages, as search engine spiders do not index web pages with question mark within the URL.

-You have also some difficulty in linking to your web pages for others as the special characters in your dynamically generated web pages may meddle with the XHTML code of the websites trying to link with yours

[greekhand]

You should used 301 redirect ... That will pass the link juice of the old pages to the new pages.

If you don't know what 301 redirects are , just Google it.

Good luck.

[vmlinuz]

@bbonline:
What you wrote has nothing to do with redirects. It's about search engine friendly url's, and not using queries in links.

As for the redirects: it might affect your rankings for a short period, until your new pages get indexed. But, as greekhand pointed out, 301 redirect is the recommended way (by Google) in these cases.

[baggsy]

Agreed with vmlinuz and Greekhand. 301-ing is the way to go!

Some believe that even 301's aren't as good as they used to be though. If they used to pass 85% of the link-juice, maybe they'll only pass 75-80% (at a guess) now, as Google may have clocked onto the fact that SEO's use this tactic regularly...

Not that there is much we can do about it though - redirecting is a must in lots of cases.

[raphnix]

In my case, Google have recognized my change of domain name through webmaster tool and their other services about webmaster so I didn't had the worries about my past ranking affecting the development of my new domain in their SE.

In fact, some of my targeted keywords have already been changed to my new one. It's just a matter or time and patience for your new redirects to be recognized by the major SEs.