Link Sponges
As a new addition to the made-up world of SEO parlance, I’d like to propose the term “Link Sponge”. I may be wrong in thinking there isn’t a phrase for this already, but here’s the definition:
- Link Sponge - a URL that is used to prettify an otherwise ugly URL, then 302 redirected to a longer URL. The webmaster who does this probably doesn’t consider:
a) setting up a page at the location of the pretty URL
b) redirecting the pretty URL properly
c) setting up a URL rewrite so the user sees the pretty URL whilst the server is actually displaying the content from the ugly URL
Obviously (c) is the preferable option here.
So say a website sends out this “link sponge” URL (example.com/lovely) in a press release, gets a ton of backlinks for it, and resulting PageRank. Because they’ve 302′d the URL, the pretty URL soaks up all of the lovely link juice (see the sponge analogy here 
), and passes the user along to the ugly URL (example.com/1234xSkgd.aspx).
Then maybe a year later, this website decides to restructure their website. They forget about the pretty URL they set up because they assume that they’re getting traffic to the ugly URL because it’s a good page. So they set up a spangly new URL, say example.com/sooo-lovely.aspx, and 302 the old page to this page (just because that’s the default in IIS/Apache), or maybe just delete it.
So the search engines follow all these great links to example.com/lovely and get a 302 chain of redirects or a 404 error. The webmaster wonders where all their traffic went. The link sponge then solidifies and sinks like a stone…
