So I set-up the meta redirect. After a couple of weeks I noticed worse positions of every aggrieved article. After set-up of 301 redirect the positions are back and are improving in addition.

I just want to say that you never know how Google treats anything unless you’re Google engineer :) .

I actually tried testing this with the blogspot custom domain feature. It’s a very strange creature indeed.

It worked for
richard.hearne.blogspot.com -> redcardinal.ie
Threw error for
richard.hearne.blogspot.com -> http://www.redcardinal.ie
richard.hearne.blogspot.com -> blog.redcardinal.ie
giving the error that a blog already exists on that domain.

I changed anything in DNS or set up CNAME prior to testing.

I tested redirecting to some .coms I have – no joy.

Seems that they perhaps can’t handle .ie domains and just let them through.

This seems to be quite a serious issue.

The other huge problem is that you cant redirect to subdirectories?? I really think Google should stick to search – they really manage to mess up content systems liek blogspot and groups *sigh*

I didn’t want to confuse you so commenting again

I should also note it is still useful that they are following the meta redirect, or something to be very aware of as an affiliate using redirects.

I would strongly suggest using a test blog and experiment in some of the following things.

The main feature you are after is under settings >> publishing in Blogger, you enter a domain name, and the redirect starts working very fast.

What I think might be the best methodology is

If you have already been using Bloger publishing on your own domain, you don’t need to setup the redirect.

If you have been using blogspot
Export your blog contents first (or you could call this import to Wordpress)
Check long URLs, I still have problems with many of mine that were truncated by the Wordpress permalink stub system, I am picking those up slowly.
Once you have your blog setup on your own domain under Wordpress. and everything is working fine, add the domain to settings >> publishing

Sometime soon I am going to go through this process on some other blogs, but many of my old blogspot blogs were heavy on using old HTML elements like tables and even dhtml overlays, and as they still make money, I don’t want to rock the boat.

I know this is a little old but I’m wondering if you know how you managed to get the real 301 from blogspot?

Here are the headers from your old blogspot blog:
#1 Server Response: http://niche-website.blogspot.com/
HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.0 301 Moved Permanently
Location: http://andybeard.eu/
Cache-control: private
Content-Length: 202
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 17:57:32 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Server: GFE/1.3
Connection: Keep-Alive
Redirect Target: http://andybeard.eu/

From what I can see it’s a true 301 redirect not a META refresh.

Any ideas how to achieve this?

Rgds and thanks
Richard