Longer than most people keep them. The common advice is a year; the honest answer is that removing them has a cost and keeping them usually does not, so the burden of proof sits with removal.
The minimum
A year is the floor, and it comes from how long search engines take to fully reprocess a URL change across a site. Removing redirects before that means old URLs start returning 404s while they are still being followed.
Why longer is usually right
- External links do not update. A link from an article published in 2019 will point at the old URL forever. That link keeps sending people and value for as long as it exists.
- Printed and offline references — brochures, packaging, business cards — have no expiry.
- Bookmarks and saved links persist indefinitely.
- Redirects cost almost nothing at server or CDN level.
Given that, the practical answer for most sites is to keep them indefinitely and stop thinking about it.
When removal is justified
- The rule set has grown large enough to affect response times — thousands of individually evaluated rules rather than patterns.
- The rules have become unmaintainable and nobody knows what they do.
- A redirect points at something that no longer exists, so it should be a 410 instead.
Even then, remove selectively. Check which redirects are still being hit before deleting anything — server logs answer this directly.
What to do before removing any
- Check hit counts. A redirect still receiving traffic is doing its job.
- Check whether external links still point at the old URL.
- Confirm the destination still exists and returns 200.
- Remove in batches and watch for 404s afterwards.
Chains are the real maintenance task
The more useful work is not removing redirects but flattening them. After two or three site changes, old URLs redirect to URLs that themselves redirect. Each hop loses a little and adds latency, and long chains can be abandoned entirely.
Whenever you migrate again, update the existing redirects to point at the new final destination rather than letting them chain through the intermediate URL. See redirect chains and how to build a redirect map.
Frequently asked questions
Do redirects lose value over time?
A 301 consolidates signals onto the destination. The consolidation is not on a timer — what matters is that the redirect keeps resolving.
Can I keep them forever?
Yes, and for most sites that is the correct default. The cost is negligible.
What about the old domain after a domain change?
Keep renewing it. Letting it lapse discards everything the redirects were preserving. See changing domain without losing SEO.
Do they slow the site?
Individually no. Very large rule sets evaluated per request can, which is an argument for patterns over thousands of individual rules, not for removal.
Consulting CTA
If your redirect rules have accumulated past the point of being understood, book an SEO consultation.