There is a hot debate amongst SEOs about what type of redirects to use for SEO, particularly when it comes to passing PageRank.  At Big Digital Adelaide today, I asked Gary Illyes from Google about the great redirect debate, and whether it really matters whether a site uses a 301, 302 or 3o7 redirect, as we have seen sites use a variety of redirect styles, for whatever reason.

“Does it matter what style of redirects sites use, whether it is 301, 302 or 307?  Will they all work appropriately in Google’s eyes and will they all pass PageRank?”

Illyes answer was short and succinct.  “Don’t worry about it.  Just use whatever you want, use whatever makes sense for you.”

I recently saw someone trying to argue that the use of a 307 redirect was a blackhat spam technique, while many sites use a 302 when they clearly mean to use a 301.  Google has also said it doesn’t matter whether you use a 301 or a 302 when switching to HTTPS, they will both pass PageRank to the new URLs, which makes sense since site owners would be reluctant to switch to HTTPS if there was the potential loss of PageRank from making a site more secure.

Of course, the “best practices” option is to use a 301 redirect when it is permanent, but sometimes website owners or the tech department use one of the other redirects.  But it won’t cause issues related to loss of PageRank by doing so.