[thelist] Restructuring and HTTP 301 (was: another google question)

[Dennis R]

To recap the original question, Mr Mattheis wanted to restructure
highly-ranked sites, with a custom 404 for redirects, while maintaining rank
in DMOZ and Google.

This strikes me as a candidate for HTTP 301 Moved Permanently [0], and
Google says its spider understands this [1].

My question is: what are the arguments for and against sending HTTP 301,
other than needing a redirect for every page (which could likely be handled
in some manner with a script)?

Dennis Reed
(recovering lurker)

[0] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt
[1] http://www.google.com/remove.html#change_url