Internal 301 redirect. How long before you remove it?

[blogspotter]

If i change a bunch of url structures on one site, and I had to do a do a 301 redirect to the new URL structure from htacess, how long before I can remove those redirect?
My question is how long before google discards those missing links?

If those internal pages do not have some inbound links from external pages...
can I remove those redirect after sometime?

Thanks a bunch

 

[plepco]

Why would you need to remove the 301? If you have it in your htaccess, it's out of sight out of mind pretty much.

If having a bunch of redirects really bothers you though, I would perhaps check to see that the original URLs are not appearing in the SERPs. Make sure the new URLs have appeared instead. I imagine this could take weeks at the most, but not sure. (Time for a test!)

 

[omgyams]

Interesting question. If there are no links pointing to the redirection, I don't see removing the 301 causing negative impact - or any impact at all for that matter.

If I were doing this I'd delete them once G drops the page from the index (site:url.com: Search with Many). You could also use the URL removal tool to make sure they are gone, as G will not remove broken links immediately.