redirect old url to landing page question

Question

I'm updating my site and therefore i have new links. My old url looks like this:

http://cmstutorials.org/submitted/345

and the new one looks like this:

http://cmstutorials.org/tutorial/view/Quick_Tip_Did_Internet_Explorer_get_the_Box_Model_Right

so when a user visits my old url he will be redirected to a landing page which is going to fetch the id from the url and redirect to the correct page using php.

My question is; I will be redirecting 2 times (once with htaccess and once with php), will this have a negative effect on google? or will it only be a bad thing if google comes accross a 404 not found. (if the id of a tutorial is not found a simple message will be displayed, it won't really be a 404 not found page)

Answer 1

Use 301 redirect (permanent redirect) and google will replace old url with new one.

header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
header( "Location: http://cmstutorials.org/tutorial/view/Quick_Tip_Did_Internet_Explorer_get_the_Box_Model_Right
" ); 

Here is official google docs about 301 redirect http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=93633

Answer 2

two redirects is ugly. but the answer is no, if you do a proper 301 (moved permanently redirect). google states that the juice is passed on 100% in 301 redirects, but i dunno whether it will stay like this or how other search engines gudge it.