--- title: "How much link equity does a 301 redirect actually pass?" url: https://seomadman.com/reports/redirect-link-equity-retention-estimates section: reports published: 2026-06-29T00:00:00.000Z modified: 2026-06-29T00:00:00.000Z author: Adam Hafez topics: ["Technical SEO"] --- # How much link equity does a 301 redirect actually pass? ## The short answer No source, including Google, has published a measured figure for how much link equity a 301 redirect passes. Google's statements, from Matt Cutts in 2013 to Gary Illyes in 2016, say redirects lose "no" or "identical" equity to a link, without a number. Moz's widely quoted 90-99% range is an estimate, not a study, and Semrush avoids a figure entirely. ## Key takeaways - Google has never published a specific percentage for how much link equity a 301 redirect passes, in any statement traced for this report. - Matt Cutts said in 2013 that PageRank lost through a 301 is "currently identical" to what dissipates through a normal link, without quantifying either figure. - Gary Illyes tweeted in July 2016 that "30x redirects don't lose PageRank anymore," a stronger claim than Cutts' 2013 statement, still with no number attached. - Moz's redirection guide states a 301 "passes between 90-99% of link equity," the most specific figure in circulation, but does not publish a study or crawl behind it. - Semrush's own 301 redirect guide says search engines transfer "almost all" ranking power, choosing the same unquantified language Google itself uses. Ask how much link equity a 301 redirect passes and every answer sounds precise: 90%, 99%, "almost all," "no loss at all." None of them is a measurement. Nobody outside Google can observe how PageRank moves through Google's index, which means every figure in this piece, including the ones attributed to Google itself, is a public statement of position rather than a number anyone verified from the outside. ## What Google has actually said, and never said Google's own position has moved twice on the record, and neither move came with a percentage. In a February 2013 video, Matt Cutts said "the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of PageRank that dissipates through a link" - a statement that a redirect loses no more than an ordinary hyperlink does, without saying how much a link loses either. In July 2016, Gary Illyes went further in a tweet: "30x redirects don't lose PageRank anymore," dropping even the comparison to a regular link. John Mueller has since added the caveats that matter in practice: redirecting to a topically unrelated page risks Google treating it as a soft 404, and a chain of several redirects behaves worse than one clean hop, even though no single hop is said to have a fixed cost. Put together, this is thirteen years of consistent Google messaging in one direction - "close to full value, and increasingly no measurable loss" - and zero years of Google naming a number. That gap is not an oversight. PageRank's internal calculation is one of the things Google has never published in disclosed detail for any purpose, redirects included, so a percentage was never on the table to begin with. ## The industry's own estimates: a number and a shrug The one specific figure that circulates widely, "301 redirects pass 90-99% of link equity," comes from Moz's own redirection guide. Moz states the range as guidance, not as a finding from a disclosed crawl or study, and does not publish the methodology behind it. The figure also predates Illyes' 2016 statement by several years, which is part of why it keeps getting cited alongside claims that contradict it: the 90-99% range and "redirects don't lose PageRank anymore" cannot both be describing the same current reality, and only one of the two sources says how it arrived at its position (neither, in fact - Moz gives a range with no visible study, and Google gives a tweet with no visible study either). Semrush, by contrast, declines to give a number at all. Its own 301 redirect guide says search engines "typically transfer almost all of the old page's ranking power to the new page," choosing the same kind of unquantified language Google itself uses rather than repeating Moz's range or proposing a figure of its own. That is itself informative: a tool vendor with its own crawl data and a direct commercial reason to publish a precise number chose not to. ## Why we care **Every number in this piece describes a public position, not a measurement.** No source cited here, Google included, has published a disclosed methodology for isolating how much authority a 301 redirect passes versus every other signal that changes when a URL moves. Treat "90-99%," "almost all," and "no loss anymore" as three ways of saying the same thing with different confidence, not as three competing facts to average. **The actionable guidance sits underneath the disagreement, not inside it.** Every source agrees, without needing a number, that a 301 to a genuinely equivalent page passes most or all of a page's authority, and that the real risk is a redirect to an unrelated destination, which Google has said on the record it may not credit at all. That distinction is worth more than any percentage in this piece. **A single redirect's estimated pass-through rate is a separate question from what a real redirect chain does to traffic.** This report covers the per-hop estimate; a documented, measured outcome from one migration belongs in our [case studies](/studies) rather than in a comparison of publicly stated positions like this one, and the two should never be quoted as if they answer the same question. ## Frequently asked questions ### What percentage of link equity does a 301 redirect pass, according to Google? Google has never published a percentage. The closest thing to an official position is Gary Illyes' 2016 statement that 30x redirects "don't lose PageRank anymore," which is a claim about direction, not a measured figure. ### Is the 90-99% figure from Ahrefs or Moz? Moz. The exact range traces to Moz's own redirection guide, which states it as guidance rather than as the result of a published study or disclosed crawl, and it predates Google's 2016 statement that redirects no longer lose PageRank at all. ### Should I still worry about link equity loss when redirecting a page? The real risk documented on the record is a redirect to a topically unrelated page, which Google has said it may treat as a soft 404 and not credit at all, not a fixed percentage tax on every redirect. ## Sources 1. [30x redirects don't lose PageRank anymore](https://x.com/methode/status/757923179641839616) - Gary Illyes (Google) (primary) 2. [Google: There is no PageRank dilution when using 301, 302, or 30x redirects anymore](https://searchengineland.com/google-no-pagerank-dilution-using-301-302-30x-redirects-anymore-254608) - Search Engine Land 3. [Google: PageRank Dilution Through A 301 Redirect Is A Myth](https://searchengineland.com/google-pagerank-dilution-through-a-301-redirect-is-a-myth-149656) - Search Engine Land 4. [What Is a 301 Redirect? (Redirection Guide)](https://moz.com/learn/seo/redirection) - Moz 5. [301 Redirects: What They Are & How to Implement Them](https://www.semrush.com/blog/301-redirects/) - Semrush