301 issue in IE9

[SEI]

My development team recently discovered an issue with 301 redirects caching in IE9. They did some research and found the situation was very complicated so their solution was to use 302s and no longer use 301s.  As a temporary solution to a few URLs I was okay with this, but we have a site redesign launching in a few months and I am quite worried if we have to do all of our redirects as 302s. Has anyone else had this issue with IE9 and 301s. I could use any advice on how to overcome this issue.

Thanks!

[StreamlineMetrics]

Hmm, this is the first I've heard of this issue since I rarely use IE9. But I found this which may help - http://agsci.psu.edu/it/how-to/topics/web/web-development/plone/internet-explorer-9-permanently-caches-redirects

It is very important that you use 301 redirects instead of 302 redirects if the pages are going to be permanently moved.

[john4math]

I'm not exactly sure what the problem you're having with IE9 is from the description, but all modern browsers are allowed to cache 301 redirects, not just IE9.  301 redirects are permanent redirects.  If you set up a URL to 301 redirect to another URL, you should never change that redirect to point to another page.  People who have been through the redirect before may cache it and the browser will put them through the redirect next time without hitting your server for the new page (after all, you told the browser it was a permanent redirect).

It looks like in IE9 it may be complicated to clear the 301 from the browser's memory (beyond just clearing the browser cache), so beware!  Here's an article I found about that.  And here's an article about undoing 301 redirect mistakes.

[SEI]

They told me the issue is causing the redirect script to break so redirects don't fire and we just get a 404. I will say I don't fully understand what is going on from a technical perspective. But, I understand that they want to stop using 301s and obviously that is scary to me as an SEO. I want to provide them with some more information or a solution so that they feel comfortable using 301s.

[john4math]

If they're permanent redirects, they should be done on your server so it shouldn't matter what browser the user is using.  You're not doing the redirects with JavaScript, are you?

[Dr-Pete]

Haven't heard of that with IE9, but from an SEO standpoint, 302s everywhere is much more risky than a few 301s mis-firing as 404s. I get why they're concerned, but this is the wrong solution. Is there a way to set up the redirects within the page headers and only returns 302s for IE9, for the short-term. That's not ideal, but it's at least a stop-gap solution. I'm sincerely afraid their short-term "fix" could cause you long-term problems.