301 redirects

I'm just about to upload my new OC store (1.4.9.2) over the top of my old OSC store.

I've written 100+ 301 redirects in my .htaccess file so I don't lose my search engine rankings, etc.

The only way I could get the redirects to work with SEO urls turned on was as follows:

redirect 301 /catalog/singapore.html /singapore?

Note the trailing ?. When redirected, the address shows up as:

http://www.mystore.com/singapore?

Instead of just: http://www.mystore.com/singapore (which is how it shows when I click on the Singapore links in my OC store).

Without the ? in the .htaccess file, it redirects to the wrong address:

http://www.mystore.com/singapore?_route_=catalog/singapore.html

Some redirects wouldn't work with the trailing ?:

redirect 301 /catalog/contact_us.php /index.php?route=information/contact

Which is fine, as they still work.

I know that this is something to do with RewriteEngine On, but it doesn't seem to matter if I put the redirects above or below this in the .htaccess file, the same thing still happens.

All I want to know is if redirecting with the trailing ? will affect search engines somehow (duplicate content?) or anything else?

Just a note to anyone who may see these redirect examples and attempt to copy them:

They will work on some hosts/servers but not all.

On my testing host/server (live, not local), this worked fine: redirect 301 /catalog/singapore.html /singapore?

But when I moved to my actual server/host I kept on getting Internal Server Error 500.

I had to change them to: redirect 301 /catalog/singapore.html http://www.mystore.com/singapore?

Better to stick with this as it is the way it's supposed to be done.

Anyone have ideas about the possibility of duplicate content issues due to the trailing ?

I'm in the middle of the same process!

Just removed my osCommerce files + database which I've used for 5 years to be replaced with OpenCart.

I'm not going to write redirects, I let Google rebuild my ranking.

I've created just one redirect, that is to a custom page explaining customers clicking on an outdated link what happened and how they could/should proceed.

I've created just one redirect, that is to a custom page explaining customers clicking on an outdated link what happened and how they could/should proceed.

That's a whole lot simpler, but aren't you concerned about Google/other search engines having to find and rank all of your pages again, and the time this will take?

I've got fairly good rankings for the old site and have read stories on here about people not doing redirects and losing their rankings.