301 Redirects Rules Change: What You Need to Know for SEO

Is it time to rewrite the SEO playbooks?

For what seems like forever, SEOs have operated by a set of best practices that dictate how to best handle redirection of URLs. (This is the practice of pointing one URL to another. If you need a quick refresher, here’s a handy guide on HTTP status codes.)

These tried and true old-school rules included:

1. 301 redirects result in around a 15% loss of PageRank. Matt Cutts confirmed this in 2013 when he explained that a 301 loses the exact same amount of PageRank as a link from one page to another.
2. 302s don’t pass PageRank. By definition, 302s are temporary. So it makes sense for search engines to treat them different.
3. HTTPS migrations lose PageRank. This is because they typically involve lots of 301 redirects.

These represent big concerns for anyone who wants to change a URL, deal with an expired product page, or move an entire website.

The risk of losing traffic can mean that making no change at all becomes the lesser of two evils. Many SEOs have delayed site migrations, kept their URLs ugly, and have put off switching to HTTPS because of all the downsides of switching.

The New Rules of 3xx Redirection-

Perhaps because of the downsides of redirection — especially with HTTPS — Google has worked to chip away at these axioms over the past several months.

• In February, Google’s John Mueller announced that no PageRank is lost for 301 or 302 redirects from HTTP to HTTPS. This was largely seen as an effort by Google to increase webmaster adoption of HTTPS.
• Google’s Gary Illyes told the SEO world that Google doesn’t care which redirection method you use, be it 301, 302, or 307. He explained Google will figure it out and they all pass PageRank.
• Most recently, Gary Illyes cryptically announced on Twitter that 3xx (shorthand for all 300) redirects no longer lose PageRank at all.

Do these surprising changes mean all is well and good now?

Yes and no.

While these are welcome changes from Google, there are still risks and considerations when moving URLs that go way beyond PageRank. We’ll cover these in a moment.

First, here’s a diagram that attempts to explain the old concepts vs. Google’s new announcements.

Let’s cover some myths and misconceptions by answering common questions about redirection.

Q: Can I now 301 redirect everything without risk of losing traffic?

A: No

All redirects carry risk.

While it’s super awesome that Google is no longer “penalizing” 301 redirects through loss of PageRank, keep in mind that PageRank is only one signal out of hundreds that Google uses to rank pages.

Ideally, if you 301 redirect a page to an exact copy of that page, and the only thing that changes is the URL, then in theory you may expect no traffic loss with these new guidelines.

That said, the more moving parts you introduce, the more things start to get hairy. Don’t expect your redirects to non-relevant pages to carry much, if any, weight. Redirecting your popular Taylor Swift fan page to your affiliate marketing page selling protein powder is likely dead in the water.

In fact, Glenn Gabe recently uncovered evidence that Google treats redirects to irrelevant pages assoft 404s. In other words, it's a redirect that loses both link equity and relevance.

Q: Is it perfectly safe to use 302 for everything instead of 301s?

A: Again, no

A while back we heard that the reason Google started treating 302 (temporary) redirects like 301s (permanent) is that so many websites were implementing the wrong type (302s when they meant 301s), that it caused havoc on how Google ranked pages.

The problem is that while we now know that Google passes PageRank though 302s, we still have a few issues. Namely:

1. We don’t know if 301s and 302s are equal in every way. In the past, we’ve seen 302s eventually pass PageRank, but only after considerable time has passed. In contrast to 301s that pass link signals fairly quickly, we don’t yet know how 302s are handled in this manner.
2. 302 is a web standard, and Google isn’t the only player on the block. 302s are meant to indicate a temporary redirect, and it’s quite possible that other search engines (Baidu, Bing, DuckDuckGo) and social services (Facebook, Twitter, etc) treat 302s differently than Google.

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