The confusion arose as comments made by Matt on Webmaster Radio were misreported and quickly taken up as true by online commentators. The conclusion was, erroneously, drawn that 301 redirects were being affected as a result of the ongoing Bigdaddy update, and that pages at either end of the 301 ran the risk of being removed from the Google index.
Just to reassure those who have heard of 301 errors possibly arising as a result of the Bigdaddy update: this issue is only a rumour and is not the case at all. The actual comments made by Matt referred to two separate issues.
One was the use of 301 redirects to avoid creating duplicate content within a domain, specifically the with and without 'www' homepage duplication issue. While the second, separate, issue was regarding the use of the Google URL removal tool.
Essentially, Matt pointed out that many webmasters use these two tools in tandem when duplicate content issues arise and that often they accidentally remove both pages from the Google index.
In fact, bigmouthmedia notes that Matt then went on to point out that the Bigdaddy update would deal with errors such as this more effectively.
So it's official: don't worry about those redirects and, as always, be careful with the Google removal tool and everything should be just fine.
