301-ing a relevant expired domain into a silo: equity transfer, measured honestly

301-ing a relevant expired domain into a silo: equity transfer, measured honestly

Question: redirecting an aged, topically-relevant domain into your site is a classic equity play. How much actually transfers, and does it last?

What was done: a defunct but on-topic domain (12 years old, ~40 referring domains, no spam history I could find) was 301-redirected page-by-page into the matching silo of an active site. Mappings were content-relevant, not blanket-to-homepage.

Outcome: the receiving silo's average position improved 3.6 places within five weeks. But by month four it had given back about 40% of that gain, settling at roughly +2.2 versus baseline. The initial spike-then-partial-decay pattern showed up consistently across the silo's pages.

Caveat: n=1 redirect event, and a core update fell in month three, so the decay is partly attributable to algorithm movement rather than equity "wearing off." Relevance of the mapping likely matters more than the raw link count, but I can't prove that here.

Method note: single redirect event, page-level position tracking over 16 weeks, one update in-window (confounder).

Confidence: low-to-medium — real measured effect, decay attribution uncertain.