Google’s John Mueller has said before to keep your redirects in place for a year. John added that it needs to be kept live for “at least for a year” now, not around a year, so that you can ensure the redirects are “reprocessed a few times.” He said in most cases, redirects are left in place for multiple years.

So when setting up redirects, make sure you have a plan to test to make sure they are redirecting properly for at least 12 months or longer. Maybe even set up a way to check how many times GoogleBot tries those URLs?

Here is John’s tweet:

Sometimes with redirects, you don’t always have control – but when you do, keep these points in mind.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Update: Carlos de Varona of Chroma House Productions, a video production company in Miami, was the one who asked the question and asked I mention that, so here it is.